The well-known Ellochka from the novel "12 Chairs" easily managed thirty words of the Russian language, but, apparently, great success never achieved it in my life. How many words do we need to know in English in order to communicate in everyday and professional themes? According to researchers, about 40 words make up necessary minimum for 50% understanding and speaking in everyday speech situations, 400 words should be enough for 90% of cases, and 1000 words will provide you successful communication by 95%. Native speakers use an average of 3,000 to 20,000 words, it depends on the level of education of each specific person and typical situations in which he has to communicate. Practice shows that for English learners it is enough to learn 1500-2000 words to feel confident in a conversation. Concerning professional terms, then they usually do not cause difficulties, because in most cases this is an international vocabulary. But the most important thing is to understand that words should not just be written on beautiful cards and hung around the house, they should become your working tools. Let's see what steps will help you to firmly master the necessary vocabulary, that is, vocabulary.
1. Read carefully and draw conclusions
Whatever you read - fiction, market news valuable papers or a gardening blog - pay attention to how words are used, what combinations they make. Highlight, write out, copy what seems useful to you. For example, here is an excerpt from the article "How to Become an Early Riser" (by Steve Pavlina):
It seems there are two main schools of thought about sleep patterns. One is that you should go to bed and get up at the same time every day. It's like having an alarm clock on both ends - you try to sleep the same hours each night. This seems practical for living in modern society. We need predictability in our schedules. And we need to ensure adequate rest.
How can we analyze what we have read?
- "It seems" - it seems, apparently. We just take it as an introductory word.
- "This seems practical" - it seems practical. We understand that an adjective is used after “seems”, and now we can speak by analogy: “This seems interesting”, “This seems stupid”, “Your ideas seem nice”.
- "Predictability" - predictability. If we know that “predict” means to predict and “ability” means ability, then we can calculate the meaning of this word as well.
2. Watch videos with and without subtitles
The same work can be done when watching your favorite movies, series and TV shows. If you use subtitles, it will be more convenient for you to write out the phrase you like, if not, then train auditory perception pause and repeat after the speaker. We can recommend an excellent resource that provides the opportunity to watch TV shows in the original with super-useful subtitles: when you hover over a word, a Russian translation appears. It saves a lot of time and improves memorization.
3. Sing your favorite songs
We have already discussed how songs can help us learn English. Extension vocabulary is one of the tasks where songs can be applied especially successfully. It is always much easier to remember what you like and what is related to positive emotions. There are a lot of sites with lyrics on the Internet, for example:
By listening to your favorite songs and singing along to the performers, you learn whole phrases easily and with pleasure.
4. Take a cue from celebrities
Search for something like "Brad Pitt interview" or "chat show with celebrities" and you'll get tons of stuff to independent work. After reading or listening to the interview excerpts, you will surely notice that certain words are used more often. For example, "amazing" is a very popular adjective for expressing delight:
- "You look amazing!"
- "The film was amazing!"
- It was an amazing experience.
5. Mastering typical phrases for standard situations
If you like to travel, you will surely need a set of certain phrases and expressions that you may need at the airport, customs, hotel, store, etc. As you know, such conversations do not differ in a special variety, therefore, for greater certainty, you can learn several mini-dialogues on desired topics. Various Internet resources will help you with this, where audio recordings and texts are collected, as well as tasks for them are presented. For example, you can start from this site
6. Learning words by topic
It is much easier to memorize new words that are related in meaning. If, for example, you are studying the topic "Food", you just need to learn the names of different products, ready meals, adjectives to describe them, etc. By discussing the tasks with the teacher, you will be able to activate these words, i.e. transfer from a passive stock to a set of "working tools". Learning will be more effective if you use different types memory: look at the pictures, listen to the pronunciation and repeat yourself. Use, for example, such a resource that will help you do all of the above and learn new words with ease.
7. Use Dictionaries
In our age information technologies paper dictionaries are no longer popular, and even schoolchildren are willing to use their online versions. Beginning with Pre-Intermediate level it is recommended to use the so-called "English-English dictionaries", that is, not to translate unfamiliar words, but to look for their definitions in English. In addition, dictionaries can provide you with a stock of synonyms, antonyms, and idioms, which include given word. According to Wikipedia, the following dictionaries are the most useful and reliable sources of information:
8. Playing word games
Crosswords, gallows, scrabble and other games can also help you enrich your speech, because thanks to them you will remember the spelling of the words you know in a fun way. In addition, in many word games you can play cheerful company, combining business with pleasure: learning English with friendly communication. Tip for the curious: try playing Scrabble with an open dictionary.
9. We arm ourselves with devices and gadgets
It takes a long time to write words on cards, there is no time to make sentences, but we always have smartphones, iPhones and other devices at hand. When a free minute appears, you can start learning new words, and you don’t need to carry any leaflets, printouts, textbooks with you. If you don't know which app to choose, take advice from the British Council experts.
10. Use it or lose it!
The most important thing in mastering vocabulary is to use it in your speech. Passive vocabulary is good for reading and listening, that is, for recognizing words. For speaking and writing, we need to learn how to retrieve words from memory very quickly, and this is achieved only by practice. According to researchers, in order for a word to become active in speech, it must be used in various contexts about 17 times. Therefore, before class, set yourself the task of speaking more than the teacher and be sure to use new words.
Big and Friendly family EnglishDom
Every serious lover of anything in the world sooner or later sets on fire with the desire to measure his collection: in money, in volume, in quantity ... The philatelist carefully blows dust off the hundredth stamp in the album, Henry Ford polishes the new tire, Rockefeller looks at the number of zeros in the amount stored in the bank, etc. How to be an English lover? Love for English can also be measured. Hours dedicated to study? Words that make up an active vocabulary!
Stocks vary.
No, not firewood for the winter and not sweets under the pillow, as you already understood, but English words in the lexicon. There is nothing shameful or boastful about measuring vocabulary: after all, there is no limit to perfection, but there are intermediate stages on the way to the goal.
Statistics, backed up by practice, says that in order to freely express your thoughts in English, you need only 2000 words. Statistics, backed up by optimism, call the figure 1000-1500 words, and the creators of Basic English are magicians and ours. best friends- only 850 words. Realists and optimists, wait a little with skepticism! Basic English is divided into thematic groups words (objects and phenomena, actions and movements, expression of qualities) - a kind of selection of the most hit copies from each category. In fact, the most commonly used monosyllabic words(514 out of 850), easy to remember and pronounce.
We want to ask everyone who relaxed and breathed a sigh of relief after the announced figures: what do you personally mean by the concept of “speaking freely”? Of course, in order to ask for a window seat at the check-in desk at the airport or order a veal chop in a restaurant, 2000 words are enough. Diving begins where, when answering a question, you will not catch the meaning of unfamiliar words spoken or you will not be able to talk about specific gastronomic preferences in the company of gourmets. And then we multiply 2000 by two and get 4000 words, which will surely allow you not to lose face and keep a conversation in English well done.
Another nuance: so far we have been talking about active vocabulary, i.e. layer of those words that you regularly use in conversation. What you once wrote out in a dictionary and on occasion it is possible (!) Remember the meaning is called passive reserve - words that you seem to know, but most of them lie on the shelves of memory under a layer of dust. Yes, they get into the overall standings, but they do not bring special dividends.
Perfectionists who want more! outside language environment learning 8,000 words that make up the active vocabulary of an English-speaking citizen is quite difficult. It is possible, of course, but with great energy consumption, diligence and methodicalness. With a baggage of 4-5 thousand words, you can safely pack your bags to Britain, the USA or Canada, where you are doomed to expand your vocabulary to the cherished 8-10 thousand units.
Vocabulary gradations
Or how much is needed complete happiness? You can start with the top 10 or top 100 words in English and already rejoice. A selection of the most commonly used English words around the world will set the right vector for vocabulary replenishment. And we again pick up the ruler and return to simple arithmetic, this time dedicating you to gradations (types) of vocabulary.
400-500 words of active vocabulary - a pass to the world of English and a certificate of language proficiency in basic level
. 800-1000 "assets" of words will give you the opportunity to explain yourself and talk about everyday topics, the same amount of "passives" will allow you to read simple texts
. 1500-2000 words "assets" will be rewarded with an opportunity free communication during the day or the same number of “passives” - confident reading of more complex texts
. 3000-4000 words bring you closer to almost fluent reading of newspapers or books and magazines in your specialty
. 8000 words guarantee full communication for the average European. This is also enough for free reading and presentation of thoughts in writing.
. up to 13,000 words characterize a highly educated person learning English as a foreign language.
How to determine and check the vocabulary of the English language?
Find out on the accounts? Marking familiar words in the dictionary? Let's not reinvent the wheel and borrow the answer from the creators of the test, which can weigh your weight in 2-3 minutes. vocabulary baggage with an error of up to 10%. Link to the test will be in a minute, but for now short instruction on its application and the answer to the question "how it works".
The developers took as a basis a dictionary of 70,000 words, discarded obsolete, compound words, scientific terms and derivatives from each other, having received as a result already 45,000. Then they sorted by frequency of use, sincerely admitting that the last 10,000 out of 45,000 are extremely rare, so that even a respectable Briton may not feel remorse, having never used them in his life. From the test for English vocabulary, words were excluded, the meaning of which can be obtained by friendship with logic.
The whole test consists of two pages: each contains English words in several columns without any logical sequence. If you know at least one of possible values words, then confidently put a tick next to it. The task is the same on two pages, only on the second page the program selects words from those unfamiliar from the first page, as if wanting to make sure that you really do not know them. No sleight of hand, no cheating: the only condition is to be honest with yourself and not overdo it with the number of ticks.
We invite you to take a test for a couple of minutes, and then return to our article for debriefing. We have already prepared a line :)
We measure the results
And now you are left alone with your test result. How did others do? Statistics collected after passing this test, says that among non-native speakers, the majority of respondents received in the end from 3 to 7 thousand words. There are noticeably fewer owners of 7-10 thousand words, and even fewer from 11 to 30 thousand (oddly enough, even 30-thousanders honored this test with their attention).
Among those for whom English is their native language, the situation looks different: space for not native speakers a vocabulary of 30 thousand words is the norm for 30-year-old English-speaking friends. Average result the previous category of 3-7 thousand is characteristic of children 5-6 years old. Do not forget that just at this age the world is actively explored and the entire surrounding family with 30,000 deposits around is not actively silent.
Summing up
If you are now looking at the Oxford Dictionary and thinking, “I will never learn that many words!” - distract from sad thoughts and read this article. How many words do you really need to know? You may be pleasantly surprised!
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Word, show your passport!
English students often ask, "How many words do I have to learn to be able to hold a conversation on any topic?" Good question, but before answering it, let me ask another: what do you think? A question to which there is no intelligible answer. Why? It is impossible to count the number of words in a language for one simple reason - it is difficult to decide what to consider as a word.
It is claimed, for example, that for the word "set" the Oxford Dictionary gives 464 interpretations. Do you count polysemantic word in one word or each interpretation in a separate word? And what about ( phrasal verbs): “set up”, “set about”, “set apart”, etc.? And what about the so-called open compounds - words like "hot dog", "ice cream", "real estate"? Add to this the forms of the singular and plural, verb conjugations, different endings, prefixes and suffixes - and you will understand why it is so problematic to answer how many words there are in English.
In fact, the question should be put like this: “Do you know how many words are in the big dictionary in English?" If you roughly imagine the number of words in a language, it can be compared with the number of words used 90-95% of the time in everyday speech and in the news.
Talk less, work more
In 1960, the famous American children's writer Theodor Seuss Geisel (better known under the pseudonym Dr. Seuss, author of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, The Cat in the Hat, The Lorax, etc.) published the book Green Eggs and Ham. The book was written in just 50 words and was the result of a dispute between Seuss and his publisher, Bennett Cerf. The publisher believed that Seuss would not be able to create a finished work in such harsh conditions (before that, Seuss had already written "The Cat in the Hat", which featured 225 words).
If it's possible to write a book in just 50 words, does that mean we don't need 40,000 words to communicate with each other? Note, however, that according to Susie Dent, a lexicographer, the average active vocabulary of an adult English speaker is about 20,000 words, the passive one is about 40,000 words.
What is the difference between active and passive vocabulary? Speaking plain language, active vocabulary includes words that you can remember on your own and apply. As for the passive vocabulary, these are those words that you recognize, the meaning of which you know, but which you are not able to use yourself.
How many words do you know sir?
And here we come to the most interesting. On the one hand, an adult native English speaker has an active vocabulary of about 20,000 words. On the other hand, The Reading Teacher's Book of Lists states that the first 25 words are used in 33% of everyday written texts, the first 100 words - in 50%, and the first thousand words are found in 89% of such texts!
Thus, we can safely say that only 3000 words cover about 95% of the texts. general topics(news articles, blog entries, etc.). Liu Na and Nation proved that 3000 is the approximate number of words we need to know in order to understand the rest from the context when reading unsimplified texts.
Count yourself!
The Oxford English Dictionary contains 171,476 common words. 95% of general texts cover a vocabulary of only 3,000 words. That's 1.75% of all words!
That's right: knowing 1.75% English vocabulary, you will be able to understand 95% of what you read. This is only 7.5% of the average passive vocabulary of a native speaker (40,000 words). Isn't it great?
On Pareto's Law and the Importance of Linguistic Guessing
Mobile version for iPhone:
An alternative from the creators of Merriam-Webster's 3,000 Core Vocabulary Words:
How to assess your vocabulary
So, even though a native English speaker has an active vocabulary of 20,000 words and a passive one of 40,000, learning English will be successful if you learn only 3,000 words!
95% of general texts will become available to you, and you will understand the remaining 5% intuitively. Good luck with your study!
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What should be (English) vocabulary) to solve certain problems (reading English literature, communicating on everyday topics, maintaining business correspondence, watching TV, etc.)? Many English learners ask themselves this question.
Today we will talk specifically about the vocabulary of the English language for various levels and you will find out what opportunities each of these levels opens up for you. First, let's find out what a vocabulary is. Vocabulary is a set of words that a person owns. It is divided into active (words that a person uses himself in writing and oral speech) and passive (words that a person recognizes when reading or speaking, but does not use them himself). It's obvious that passive stock significantly higher than active. It is worth noting that vocabulary should be understood not only as knowledge of words, but also their knowledge. correct pronunciation, writing and speech recognition.
How many words are in English?
It is rather difficult to answer this question. The history of Great Britain is confusing in this regard - the Iberians (the most ancient population british isles), Celts (came from modern Belgium and France), Picts (lat. piches- painted), 400-year domination of the Romans, the invasion of the West Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, Nomes, Frisians), the raids of the Scandinavians and, finally, the Normans ( Northern France, King William the Conqueror), led to the fact that there were a lot of words in the English language. The famous Oxford English Dictionary, which contains only English words and expressions, has about 600,000 English words. But according to the linguistic portal Global Language Monitor, which also includes hybrid words from dialects (Chinese English, Spanish English, computer jargon and others), there are already more than a million words in English. In practice, the vocabulary of a person for whom the language is native is an order of magnitude smaller than all the words in the language. For example, an educated native English speaker averages 12,000 to 18,000 words. For comparison, I would say that Dictionary alive Great Russian language» V. I. Dahl has about 200,000 words, 30,000 of which are the most used, and a person with higher education knows about 10,000 Russian words. (Wikipedia).
English vocabulary for different levels
And how can one or another English vocabulary be used?
- In order to be able to speak fluently or read at a basic level (Elementary / Pre-Intermediate), you need to have about 1000 words in stock.
- If you have about 2500 words in your asset, you can already communicate quite tolerably in everyday topics, read at an intermediate level.
- At 4000-5000 words - you communicate freely in different topics read newspapers and specialized literature, watch and listen to TV / radio programs (understanding the basic meaning).
- With a vocabulary of 8,000 words or more, you can already communicate at the level of an average native speaker. This reserve is enough to feel confident among the carriers in almost any situation. You can read any English literature, watch movies, have conversations on a variety of topics.
Now you understand what English vocabulary You need to achieve your goals in your life. Having reached a certain level of English proficiency, you need to constantly maintain it. It should be remembered that if you do not use the language actively, do not practice English in Everyday life, then you can easily lose your skills acquired in this way painstaking work. Your active English vocabulary will shift towards passive. How to make sure that this does not happen? The ideal solution would be to stay in English speaking country. In this case, you will have constant practice and your level of language proficiency will naturally improve and increase. But what if this is not possible? In my article, I have detailed different approaches in learning English and effective ways maintaining motivation. To check your English vocabulary you can use good service Test your vocab.
You can also check out other articles on vocabulary learning.
The vocabulary of the English language is all the active and passive vocabulary that is used when communicating in English. foreign language. However, if we use active vocabulary every day, then it is not so simple with passive vocabulary - we understand words in texts, but do not use them in daily communication.
5. Listen to songs and parse texts;
In every foreign language there are basic words that are most often used. If you choose the most common verbs, nouns, adjectives and prepositions (about 500 units in total), you can cover about 90% of the vocabulary with them, which is necessary for daily communication. However, do not think that the dictionary is everything. Words must be skillfully used, deftly weaving them into phrases and sentences, so do not chase the number of words, it is better to take care of the quality of their memorization and make sure that they move from passive vocabulary to active.
How to replenish your vocabulary of English words: a few simple tips
- Learn the words correctly. Don't try to memorize 50 words every day if you can only remember 15 as a result. Learn less, but better. Do not forget to repeat words periodically so that they are deposited in long-term memory as a result.
- Use for English-English translation dictionary. The benefit of such a dictionary is that you not only get acquainted with the meaning of words, but also learn synonyms, antonyms, and also memorize set expressions.
- Review words you have recently learned.
- Learn the words that are around you.
A little about how to learn words. It is best to memorize words and expressions by topic, for example, tourism, fashion, music, literature. Pick out the most hot topics needed for everyday life. Don't forget about active use words. You can make mini-stories with the vocabulary that you remember.
So, if you are still interested in the topic of increasing the vocabulary of the English language, here are a few examples:
1. Select a topic, divide it into subtopics, for each of which write out individual words and expressions. For example, the topic is “travel”, subtopics are airport, boarding a plane, booking a hotel, checking into a hotel, etc.
2. Use of flash cards. On one side of the card there is a word in Russian, on the other - in English. We teach until we have to turn the card over and look at the translation.
3. Learn verbs, without them there is nowhere in English.
4. Study the language regularly, and not 2 months before the intended trip.
Remember that any way to increase your vocabulary is good, the main thing is to take the time and really get into learning the language in order to keep up with the billion people who have already started learning the language of Shakespeare.
Help build vocabulary can online service for learning English Lim English. To do this, as part of the lesson, there is a personal dictionary in which you can add new words. Already in the first month of training, you can learn several hundred words, and studying for a year - at least 3 thousand. and start learning right now!
