What vocabulary should I learn?
This is a good question for an aspiring language learner. The answer depends on your level. Learning the most common words is crucial if you are a beginner or lower-level student. These are the words you will see and hear every day. Learning them first will help you understand simple conversations and texts.
Why are the common words of a language so important?
Research shows that the first 1,000 most frequent words make up about 85% of daily English usage. This includes conversations, emails, and simple articles. That means if you know these 1,000 words well, you can understand a lot. The next 1,000 words add about 4% more. After that, each group of 1,000 words gives you less and less. So it makes sense to focus on the most common words first. They give you the most significant result for your effort.
The same is true for other languages. Take German, for example. It has fewer individual words than English but builds new ones by combining easy words like Lego blocks. So if you know the common building words, you can understand much longer, more complex concepts. For instance, if you know “Hand” (hand) and “Schuh” (shoe), you can easily guess the meaning of “Handschuh” (glove).
What about higher levels?
Your vocabulary needs will differ if you are at a higher level, like B1, B2 or C1. You already know the most common words. Now, you need to learn words that relate to your work goals. For example, you must learn legal words if you work in law. If you work in IT, you need to learn tech words.
At higher levels, learning words from reading and listening becomes more important. You will learn many new words by noticing how they are used in real life. You will also start to learn word groups (like “make a decision” or “take a break”). These are called collocations — words that often go together. Learning these terms and other idiomatic content, like phrasal verbs and idioms, will help you sound more fluent.
How do I know if words are right for my level?
This is easy for English, as you can use a free text checker. My favourite is the Oxford Text Checker. It helps you check which words in a text are A1, A2, B1, B2, or higher. It uses the Oxford 3000/5000 word lists, which are also available online. These are lists of the most common English words compiled by the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary. Let’s look at an example text about giving a presentation. Here is the text in the Oxford Text Checker:
The “Results” page provides the following information:
This analysis shows that 90% of the words are at the A1 level, and all the words can be found within the Oxford 3000 and 5000 word lists. The post is suitable for an A2 language learner. There are a few harder words like “presentation,” “slides,” and “confident,” but they are necessary for the context and do not justify grading the text higher. This is a good example of a reading text focusing on high-frequency items. You can see the importance of learning these words.
What should you do next?
Here are a few simple steps:
- Focus on learning the common words in your target language. This will help you understand most daily communication.
- Check English texts with a tool like the Oxford Text Checker.
- Use a monolingual advanced learner’s dictionary. These dictionaries use easy, high-frequency words to explain more difficult concepts.
- If you are a higher-level student, start learning words for your job, studies, or personal interests.
- Higher-level students should also focus on word groups like collocations, phrasal verbs, and idioms, not just single words. This helps you sound more fluent.
Final Tip
The more you read, listen, and speak, the more words you learn. It’s not about learning the most words. It’s about learning the right words. It is the same consideration for the language trainers or materials writers: teach the high-frequency words that will enable students to understand most of what they encounter daily.
Image by Наталия Когут from Pixabay
Source of frequency data: How English is Learned by Paul Nation and Steward Webb (OUP 2017)
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