Wikipedia: Vocabulary definitions
Vocabulary growth
Initially, in the infancy phase, vocabulary growth requires no effort. Infants hear words and mimic them, eventually associating them with objects and actions. This is the listening vocabulary. The speaking vocabulary follows, as a child's thoughts become more reliant on its ability to express itself without gestures and mere sounds. Once the reading and writing vocabularies are attained – through questions and education – the anomalies and irregularities of language can be discovered.
In first grade, an advantaged student (i.e. a literate student) knows about twice as many words as a disadvantaged student. Generally, this gap does not tighten. This translates into a wide range of vocabulary size in the fifth and sixth grade, when students know about 2,500–5,000 words. These young students have learned an average of 3,000 words per year, approximately eight words per day.
After leaving school, vocabulary growth plateaus. People may then expand their vocabularies by reading, playing word games, participating in vocabulary programs, etc.
Passive vs. active vocabulary
Even if we learn a word, it takes a lot of practice and context connections for us to learn it well. A rough grouping of words we understand when we hear them encompasses our "passive" vocabulary, whereas our "active" vocabulary is made up of words that come to our mind immediately when we have to use them in a sentence, as we speak. In this case, we often have to come up with a word in the timeframe of milliseconds, so one has to know it well, often in combinations with other words in phrases, where it is commonly used.
The importance of a vocabulary
An extensive vocabulary aids expressions and communication
Vocabulary size has been directly linked to reading comprehension.
Lingusitic vocabulary is synonymous with thinking vocabulary
A person may be judged by others based on their vocabulary
Native and foreign language vocabulary
Native-language vocabulary
Native speakers' vocabularies vary widely within a language, and are especially dependent on the level of the speaker's education. A 1995 study estimated the vocabulary size of college-educated speakers at about 17,000 word families, and that of first-year college students (high-school educated) at about 12,000.
Foreign-language vocabulary
The effects of vocabulary size on language comprehension
Francis and Kucera studied texts totaling one million words and found that if one knows the words with the highest frequency, they will quickly know most of the words in a text:
Vocabulary Size - Written Text Coverage
0 words = 0%
1000 = 72.0%
2000 = 79.7 %
3000 = 84.0%
4000 = 86.8%
5000 = 88.7%
6000 = 89.9%
15,851 = 97.8%
By knowing the 2000 words with the highest frequency, one would know 80% of the words in those texts. The numbers look even better than this if we want to cover the words we come across in an informally spoken context. Then the 2000 most common words would cover 96% of the vocabulary. These numbers should be encouraging to beginning language learners, especially because the numbers in the table are for word lemmas and knowing that many word families would give even higher coverage. But before you start thinking you would learn a language in no time, think how well you would understand a book in your own language where every fifth word was blacked-out! We cannot usually guess meanings from context when that many words are missing. We need to understand about 95% of a text in order to gain close to full understanding and it looks like one needs to know more than 10,000 words for that.
Basic English vocabulary
Several word lists have been developed to provide people with a limited vocabulary either quick language proficiency or an effective means of communication. In 1930, Charles Kay Ogden created Basic English (850 words). Other lists include Simplified English (1000 words) and Special English (1500 words). The General Service List,[14] 2000 high frequency words compiled by Michael West from a 5,000,000 word corpus, has been used to create a number of adapted reading texts for English language learners. Knowing 2000 English words, one could understand quite a lot of English, and even read a lot of simple material without problems.
* ^ W.N. Francis, and H. Kucera. Frequency Analysis of English Usage, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1982
Initially, in the infancy phase, vocabulary growth requires no effort. Infants hear words and mimic them, eventually associating them with objects and actions. This is the listening vocabulary. The speaking vocabulary follows, as a child's thoughts become more reliant on its ability to express itself without gestures and mere sounds. Once the reading and writing vocabularies are attained – through questions and education – the anomalies and irregularities of language can be discovered.
In first grade, an advantaged student (i.e. a literate student) knows about twice as many words as a disadvantaged student. Generally, this gap does not tighten. This translates into a wide range of vocabulary size in the fifth and sixth grade, when students know about 2,500–5,000 words. These young students have learned an average of 3,000 words per year, approximately eight words per day.
After leaving school, vocabulary growth plateaus. People may then expand their vocabularies by reading, playing word games, participating in vocabulary programs, etc.
Passive vs. active vocabulary
Even if we learn a word, it takes a lot of practice and context connections for us to learn it well. A rough grouping of words we understand when we hear them encompasses our "passive" vocabulary, whereas our "active" vocabulary is made up of words that come to our mind immediately when we have to use them in a sentence, as we speak. In this case, we often have to come up with a word in the timeframe of milliseconds, so one has to know it well, often in combinations with other words in phrases, where it is commonly used.
The importance of a vocabulary
An extensive vocabulary aids expressions and communication
Vocabulary size has been directly linked to reading comprehension.
Lingusitic vocabulary is synonymous with thinking vocabulary
A person may be judged by others based on their vocabulary
Native and foreign language vocabulary
Native-language vocabulary
Native speakers' vocabularies vary widely within a language, and are especially dependent on the level of the speaker's education. A 1995 study estimated the vocabulary size of college-educated speakers at about 17,000 word families, and that of first-year college students (high-school educated) at about 12,000.
Foreign-language vocabulary
The effects of vocabulary size on language comprehension
Francis and Kucera studied texts totaling one million words and found that if one knows the words with the highest frequency, they will quickly know most of the words in a text:
Vocabulary Size - Written Text Coverage
0 words = 0%
1000 = 72.0%
2000 = 79.7 %
3000 = 84.0%
4000 = 86.8%
5000 = 88.7%
6000 = 89.9%
15,851 = 97.8%
By knowing the 2000 words with the highest frequency, one would know 80% of the words in those texts. The numbers look even better than this if we want to cover the words we come across in an informally spoken context. Then the 2000 most common words would cover 96% of the vocabulary. These numbers should be encouraging to beginning language learners, especially because the numbers in the table are for word lemmas and knowing that many word families would give even higher coverage. But before you start thinking you would learn a language in no time, think how well you would understand a book in your own language where every fifth word was blacked-out! We cannot usually guess meanings from context when that many words are missing. We need to understand about 95% of a text in order to gain close to full understanding and it looks like one needs to know more than 10,000 words for that.
Basic English vocabulary
Several word lists have been developed to provide people with a limited vocabulary either quick language proficiency or an effective means of communication. In 1930, Charles Kay Ogden created Basic English (850 words). Other lists include Simplified English (1000 words) and Special English (1500 words). The General Service List,[14] 2000 high frequency words compiled by Michael West from a 5,000,000 word corpus, has been used to create a number of adapted reading texts for English language learners. Knowing 2000 English words, one could understand quite a lot of English, and even read a lot of simple material without problems.
* ^ W.N. Francis, and H. Kucera. Frequency Analysis of English Usage, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1982
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