Re: Vocabulary size

William Morris wrote:

> A few questions that occur to me after attending a CELTA course.
>
> I hear that a vocabulary of about 3000 words (base forms I assume) is
> adequate for communication in English. Can someone qualify this more
> closely - e.g. what degree of proficiency would such a speaker have
> reading books/papers.
>
> Is a list of such high frequency words available somewhere?
>
> Does the same go for languages such as Spanish (again, if so, where is
> such a list)?
>
> On a separate note, I hear that Swedish speakers of English, though
> often as proficient as native English speakers have little knowledge
> of grammar (again like native speakers).  What method do they use to
> teach English in Sweden?
>
> Thanks for any replies
> William


Depends what you mean by adequate.

[Native English speaking children arrive in 
1st grade of school at age 6 with vocabs in 
the 3,000 - 5,000 word range.]

Here's some English wordlists. In ascending order.

220 words

Dolch Word list - most common 220 words in English, arranged in 
order of frequency. Occur in 50 -70% of any piece of writing.

Used with slow readers, dyslexics, deaf students, esl students.

Also used by writers of children's material.

Compiled by Edward William Dolch (1889-1961)

600 words

 "Basic English" - most common 600 words

1,100 

Bramberg, Murray: "1,100 Words you should Know"

3,000 

Dale-Challe - most common 3,000 words. Used in rating 
              readability levels, standardized elementary 
              tests, etc



30,000 

Lorge-Thorndike - Most common 30,000 words. Used to develop
                  vocabulary section of IQ test back in 1954