In core-competency-oriented Chinese language arts teaching, the ultimate concern is how students understand, organize, and use language. Words are the basic units of reading comprehension and expressive production, and they also provide an important entry point for observing whether core competencies are enacted in classroom practice. The problem in current Chinese language arts classrooms is not that words are ignored, but that many forms of vocabulary instruction remain at relatively shallow levels, such as pronunciation correction, explanation of meanings, and removal of reading obstacles. They move less often toward contextual understanding, analysis of expressive effects, and students’ active use of words. This article conceptualizes this phenomenon as a structurally shallow treatment and analyzes its manifestations and causes from three dimensions: objectives, activities, and assessment. It argues that improving vocabulary instruction does not require a separate and complicated instructional model. Rather, it requires reconstructing a learning process that moves from understanding lexical meaning, to grasping contextual meaning in the text, to analyzing expressive functions, and finally to using language. In this way, language development and use, a key expression in Chinese language curriculum standards, can be transformed from curriculum discourse into an observable classroom learning process.