How many words do I need to know?
The average native speaker of any language uses around a tenth of his vocabulary in everyday speech. In other words, around 1200 to 2000.
Link: http://englishenglish.com/english_facts_13.htm
1) How many words do we need to know?
It depends on what you want to do with the language. If the goal is to travel abroad, the most frequent 1000 words are probably enough.
If you want to become fluent you will need a lot of words. The frequency of words declines quickly after the first 500 or even 1,000. In English (and many other languages), the most frequent 1,000 words may account for 70% of the content of a conversation, but the next 1,000 add only 3-5%, and after that there is not much difference in the utility of words regardless of where they place in the frequency lists.
If the goal is to communicate comfortably, read, and become fluent in the language, I believe 5,000 word families, or 8,000 words is a realistic first goal. In any case we recommend learning a lot of words.
WORD FAMILY: a group of words with the same root word (eg, “mailing” and “mailman”) or phonic base or rime (eg, “m-at,” “f-at,” and “h-at”).
2) What does knowing a word mean?
To me, knowing a word, just like knowing people, means recognition. There is such a large potential range of understanding of a word, its scope, how it is used with other words, when it is used most appropriately etc., that there is no clear point at which we can say that a learner has achieved total mastery of the word. Once we have recognition of a word, we are on our way to learning more and more about it through reading and listening, through vocabulary study and eventually, trying to use it.
3) How do we best learn words?
I think the correct strategy in learning words is to focus on building up your passive vocabulary. Effective use of vocabulary (active vocabulary) comes from familiarity with a large passive vocabulary, acquired through a lot of reading and listening. Listening and reading is easy to do, even where there are not a lot of native speakers around.
But you also need to commit to the deliberate and systematic study of the words and phrases that you come across in your reading and listening. At LingQ, whenever you save a word, LingQ captures the phrases that use these words so that you have a chance to review the occasions where a word has been encountered. This is not as good as seeing the word again in new context, but it is a chance to refresh your memory and to see how words are used.
You can list words in order of frequency and in other ways. In the end it is a meaningful context, and the systematic "mining and processing" of words from meaningful content, that is most effective way to add new words to your vocabulary.
Response to blog above:
Sorry, Steve, but I beg to differ on your quantification of words.
I was taught in my teacher training that 2,500 words is a good base, but the fact that gorillas can master a vocabulary of 400 symbols and two-year-olds have an estimated vocab of 2,000 words in their mother tongue tells me that this old rule of thumb for foreign language learning is off the mark. That 5,000 word families is approximately equal to 8,000 words is also too low, based on my experience as a language learner.
According to the information I have found so far, current research shows that we "know" many more words /polywords than initially thought: it's estimated that an average American adult (native speaker) has stored some 150,000 words / polywords in their mental lexicons. The Lexical Approach argues convincingly that one word is many words and vice versa, and each is most probably stored separately. Example with "go":gowent (most probably stored separately)gone (also separate)going-going-gonego ongo on and ongo for itgopher/go-forgoing to (to indicate future plans)to go (as in "coffee to go")on the goetc.(11 and counting, and that's just with the little word "go"!)
The only way to acquire the vast number of meanings possible in any language is to engage in as much language input as possible - exposure is the first step, then noticing new combinations and their meanings is necessary to start taking it in.
Link: http://englishenglish.com/english_facts_13.htm
1) How many words do we need to know?
It depends on what you want to do with the language. If the goal is to travel abroad, the most frequent 1000 words are probably enough.
If you want to become fluent you will need a lot of words. The frequency of words declines quickly after the first 500 or even 1,000. In English (and many other languages), the most frequent 1,000 words may account for 70% of the content of a conversation, but the next 1,000 add only 3-5%, and after that there is not much difference in the utility of words regardless of where they place in the frequency lists.
If the goal is to communicate comfortably, read, and become fluent in the language, I believe 5,000 word families, or 8,000 words is a realistic first goal. In any case we recommend learning a lot of words.
WORD FAMILY: a group of words with the same root word (eg, “mailing” and “mailman”) or phonic base or rime (eg, “m-at,” “f-at,” and “h-at”).
2) What does knowing a word mean?
To me, knowing a word, just like knowing people, means recognition. There is such a large potential range of understanding of a word, its scope, how it is used with other words, when it is used most appropriately etc., that there is no clear point at which we can say that a learner has achieved total mastery of the word. Once we have recognition of a word, we are on our way to learning more and more about it through reading and listening, through vocabulary study and eventually, trying to use it.
3) How do we best learn words?
I think the correct strategy in learning words is to focus on building up your passive vocabulary. Effective use of vocabulary (active vocabulary) comes from familiarity with a large passive vocabulary, acquired through a lot of reading and listening. Listening and reading is easy to do, even where there are not a lot of native speakers around.
But you also need to commit to the deliberate and systematic study of the words and phrases that you come across in your reading and listening. At LingQ, whenever you save a word, LingQ captures the phrases that use these words so that you have a chance to review the occasions where a word has been encountered. This is not as good as seeing the word again in new context, but it is a chance to refresh your memory and to see how words are used.
You can list words in order of frequency and in other ways. In the end it is a meaningful context, and the systematic "mining and processing" of words from meaningful content, that is most effective way to add new words to your vocabulary.
Response to blog above:
Sorry, Steve, but I beg to differ on your quantification of words.
I was taught in my teacher training that 2,500 words is a good base, but the fact that gorillas can master a vocabulary of 400 symbols and two-year-olds have an estimated vocab of 2,000 words in their mother tongue tells me that this old rule of thumb for foreign language learning is off the mark. That 5,000 word families is approximately equal to 8,000 words is also too low, based on my experience as a language learner.
According to the information I have found so far, current research shows that we "know" many more words /polywords than initially thought: it's estimated that an average American adult (native speaker) has stored some 150,000 words / polywords in their mental lexicons. The Lexical Approach argues convincingly that one word is many words and vice versa, and each is most probably stored separately. Example with "go":gowent (most probably stored separately)gone (also separate)going-going-gonego ongo on and ongo for itgopher/go-forgoing to (to indicate future plans)to go (as in "coffee to go")on the goetc.(11 and counting, and that's just with the little word "go"!)
The only way to acquire the vast number of meanings possible in any language is to engage in as much language input as possible - exposure is the first step, then noticing new combinations and their meanings is necessary to start taking it in.
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