- If you already started studying the English language, then probably you have already faced the vocabulary problem. In the beginning it seems that there are so many words to learn that you want to give up right now. Different dictionaries provide different information, but the average estimate of words in the English language is about 300 – 400 thousand. Impressive, isn’t? It’s obvious that you don’t need to know all the words. But how to figure out which words you need?
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Define your goals
- For starters, let’s find out what to know a word means. Do you know a word if you know one meaning? Do you know a word if you know how to spell it? Can you use it in a sentence?
- Your answer depends on the goal you set (read more about goal in our article about motivation). If you need conversational English, is it really necessary to be able to spell a word (it’s the 21st century, now we almost never use pens, and computers correct us)? It’s not. So, you don’t have to waste time learning how to spell acquaintance.
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Just the necessary stuff
- The words in English are often ambiguous. For instance, temple means both a kind of religious building and a spot on the human head. How often are you going to talk about anatomy? Another beautiful example is well. One of the meanings is an adverb opposite of badly, another is a pit in the ground where you can get water from. Which meaning do you think is more popular? It's simple: when you look up a word in the dictionary don't get upset because there are so many meanings. Just check the meaning that you need, because you probably will never need the others.
- However, using a word in a sentence correctly is essential. For example, the word order in English is fairly strict, that’s why even tiny mistakes may ruin the whole sentence. I really don’t like soccer and I don’t really like soccer are completely different sentences (about other mistakes that really get on native speakers’ nerves read here).
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The more is not the better
- It’s also important to mention active and passive vocabulary. Passive vocabulary is words that you know and understand but don’t use. Active vocabulary is words that you use every day. When reading a good book, you sometimes get really surprised by how reach a language is, because you don’t hear or use these words in everyday life. On average active vocabulary is 2-3 times smaller that passive. Enriching active vocabulary is a different topic, so we will talk about it another time.
- It’s very important to understand that the old saying «A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush» holds true in the learning a language context too. It's better to know 1000 words well then 3000 words badly. Surely, the more, the better, but it's about quality. So, which words do you need to learn first?
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Let's do some simple math
- The Ziph's law helps us answer this question. Basically, it says that the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its rank in the frequency table. Too tough? We’ll try to clarify. About six percent of what we say is the. Yes, seriously, just the definite article. The is the most frequently used word on the English language. The second most popular is of, the third is and, the fourth is to and so on. Of is used two times less often then the, and – three times less often, to – four times as often and so on… This law doesn’t only work in the English language; it also works in any other language.
- This law is amazing and we highly recommend you reading about it more, but how can this information be useful for us?
"It's better to know 1000 words well then 3000 words badly."
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The Top-100
- Just imagine: about 50% of what we say is 100 words that are the same. The same 100 words make up about half of Tom Sawyer, complete works of Plato, and… the Holy Bible. So, you don’t have to know a lot of words. You just need the right 100 words.
- Of course, understanding 50% of information is not understanding at all. Learning 1000 words is really easy. Sure enough, you won’t be able to communicate absolutely comfortably but it is more than enough for everyday purposes. 2500-3000 words are 85% of all words you hear on the television every day. Finally, if you know about 7000 words, you are able to read pretty much any book without using a dictionary.
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The resume
- It’s important to understand that number isn’t everything. You don’t need to look up every word you don’t know. Odd are that you will never hear it again. What really is important is learn the most frequently used words and learn how to use them right.