Pillars. The ubiquitous metaphor of the last few years in Language Learning. Supplanting the four "skills" of Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing, it announces Grammar, Vocabulary and Phonics as central to language teaching and learning.
The days of thinking that a good language lesson would automatically be made up of a little bit of listening, a bit of speaking, a bit of reading, and finally maybe time for a little bit of writing, are long gone. With the presumption that it would somehow add up to language learning if left to ferment for long enough. And that pupils would naturally lap up speaking and listening but need more time to stomach the written form of the language.
This was left behind in the 90s or perhaps the early 2000s, when it evolved into the idea of developing the skills explicitly rather than by osmosis. With as much overlap between speaking and writing as possible. And using reading and listening to model what pupils would speak and write. So whole lessons would be devoted to developing writing or working on the fluency of speaking. It brought with it the realisation that working on what to say, how to develop it and keep it coherent, was fundamental to the development of the "skills" and for language learning.
This is what was to be swept away by the new metaphor of the three pillars. The word "skills" was replaced by "modalities" to reflect the idea that they were just different ways in which the language could be met or or practised. With the knowledge of the language central, not the development of pupils' ability to deploy it.
The new paradigm was firmly centred on knowledge of the language.
How powerful is the metaphor of the pillars itself in driving this shift in thinking? What does it reveal?
Firstly, it is very deliberate that they are separate pillars.
The logic of the grammatical progression should depend on the logical step by step building up of the grammatical system. Not at the mercy of the requirements of a certain topic or transactional situation. It is a stand alone pillar, carefully built up to be free-standing.
The vocabulary pillar again, would not depend on topics. It would be carefully designed on its own terms, selected from the corpus of high frequency words. Not the words needed to talk about a certain topic or conduct a given task. With the same words being carefully built up in repeating patterns so that they are met again and again. A free standing pillar with its own carefully constructed logic.
And the same for phonics. Supposedly a third independent pillar with the key sound-spelling features met in a planned and ordered way. Even if this pillar is a bit shorter and stumpier than the other two.
So very deliberately pillars. Not just a decorative image - as stipulated by cognitive science. A visual has to be a useful diagram, not a distraction.
Some of us didn't immediately realise this.
The ALL Language World 2025 conference, with its theme of a "rich tapestry", had people talking about weaving skills and topics through the pillars. Or twisting them into a thread. One does not weave pillars. Or twist them. Pillars are pillars. Strong, linear, well-constructed, free-standing, and unencumbered.
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| Learning in languages was to be unencumbered by anything incidental which might destabilise the pillars or anything rich or complex which might compromise their classical simplicity. |
What you can do with pillars, eventually, is put on a roof. A lintel sits across the pillars, connecting them, and giving stability and turning them into a building both decorative and useful.
So why is this not part of the metaphor? Again, it is deliberate. The Ofsted research review was written in the philosophy of "novice" and "expert". According to this idea (common to Ofsted thinking about all subjects, not just languages), the carefully selected block by block knowledge had to be in place first. Just the pillars. Too soon for a roof.
Novice pupils (up to and including all but the very highest grades at GCSE), were not ready or able to use the knowledge for communication or comprehension. Only in order to meet, practise and be tested on the knowledge for its own sake. The pillars might in theory at some stage support a portico. But this was not the concern of the pillar builders.
To all intents and purposes, it was a beautiful classical-inspired unfinished building. Full of abstract cultural importance and intellectual value to be admired. Not so much a ruin, as a folly.
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