using word frequency lists

Most frequent words list | Jerry Talandis Jr. | July 24th, 2002

Hi everyone,

How's it going? The Nagoya workshop with Steve was interesting and a lot of fun. During lunch I drank the most delicious pint of dark beer in my life (Erlinger, from Germany), and I got to speak in English with unfettered abandon. What a relief that is!

Anyway, I'm looking for a list of the most frequent words in English. Does anyone out there know of such a list? I need to do more vocabulary building with my beginning students, and this kind of list seems like a good place to start.

Thanks,

Jerry

More word lists | Jake Kimball | July 24th, 2002

Here's more:

Look in "A Framework for Task-based Learning," page 171+172 for the top 200 spoken and written words.

If you're teaching children, check the Dolch Word List (search Google for more).

Click here to go to a site where you can download pdfs of Dolch word list activities.

Here's a link to the Kidzone website's page of Dolch word list games.

For Academic and University Word Lists or General Service, I go here: John Bauman.com

Jake

Using Word Frequency lists | Jerry Talandis Jr. | July 25th, 2002

Hello everyone,

Thanks to all of you who sent in website addresses for word frequency lists. They have been very helpful.

Now for a follow-up question: how best to utilize such a list?

Have any of you used such lists when teaching vocabulary? If so, how? What have your experiences been?

Currently, I'm thinking of doing the following with my beginner adult students in Japan:

I plan to get a hold of those little mini flash card sets- the ones that come on a key ring. I will present a list of the top XXX words, then have the students circle which ones they don't know. After that, I'll have them write 10 words they don't know on to their cards. They can put the English word on one side and the Japanese translation on the other, along with an English sentence using the word. Whatever. I can leave it up to them to use a system they are most comfortable with.   I'll have them learn words in groups of ten, then have students exchange cards and quiz each other. This way I can be sure that my students are learning the most common words.

Just an idea. Any others out there?

Jerry

Re: Using Word Frequency Lists | James Hobbs | July 26th, 2002

Hi Jerry,

Nothing wrong with flash cards and translations for drilling yourself on useful vocab, but I think you'll run into difficulties trying to teach the XXX most common words in a particular corpus as discreet items. When you get hold of these lists you'll find that they're full of words like "a", "the", "it", "then", "is", "would", and so on. You'll find that many of them have multiple meanings and usages, and can't really be translated. I'm sure that all your students would claim that they "know" these words, but that doesn't really tell you much. Most beginner students would say that they "know" the word "get", but few of them would be aware of the huge variety of meanings it can take ("You'll get fat if you eat too much", "I don't get what you're saying", "When did you get here?", "I can't get no satisfaction", etc.). So the usefulness of these lists is more a CSD/MAP thing; making sure that the materials you use in class offer your students plenty of exposure to the words on whatever you determine to be the relevant list.

James

Re: Using Word Frequency Lists | Jerry Talandis Jr. | July 26th, 2002

Hi James,

Hmmm... you make some good points. So, how then do you make sure your beginners learn the most frequent words? I see what you mean about the word "get" for example; it has many shades of meaning, but at the beginning level, do all those really matter? It could be enough to be able to make a coherent sentence using the word. The idea with drilling this list is that students will see the words often and have lots of opportunities to use them. I've heard that one needs to encounter a word about 20 times before it becomes part of one's lexis.

How do you teach vocab to beginners?

Jerry

Re: Using Word Frequency Lists | James Hobbs | July 26th, 2002

Hi again Jerry,

I think such a list is a wise starting point, but I think you'll find that most of the words on these lists are not just sitting there waiting to be 'learned' one at a time, so the idea of having your students 'learn' the most common words is probably not the best starting point. Think back to the lexical/grammatical distinction in lexical density. When we talk of learning lists of words we're usually thinking of L words, right- animals, action verbs, opposites, whatever. A lot, perhaps most of the 'common words' are going to be G words. Words like "of", "to" and "for" can only really be defined in terms of how they combine with other words, so I don't really see how students can go away and 'learn' them one at a time in the same way that they can learn words like 'dog', 'big', or 'eat'. Even the L words on your list will probably each have several meanings, and the first one that springs to mind will not necessarily be the most common one.

Anyway, best of luck. I've got to get back to GE and LEX now!

James

Re: Using Word Frequency Lists | Colin Graham | July 27th, 2002

Hi Jerry

From my point of view with Japanese students, most of the vocab problems seem to be with the way they record them (or not) and whether they process new words in some way or just look them up in the dictionary.

With beginners or very low-level students, just recognizing words quickly seems to pay off as much as anything else i.e. improving reading skills.

Whilst frequency lists have a place, I have to play devil's advocate and say that they are only as good as the corpus on which they are based. Sometimes some of my students surprise me by knowing words from the 10,000 word list but not 'knowing' a phrasal verb like "come back" for example.

If you are working with JHS or HS students, then you will know that Monbusho (or whatever it's calling itself these days) has a prescribed word list. Many universities also use about 95% of the same words in their entrance exams, so it may be useful to use these lists rather than a more general frequency list based on selected British, American or other forms of (written) English. There are lots of cheap texts for students studying English for university that have an index of all the words at the back- could be scanned in and compared for a CL assignment?

Anyway, from a resource point of view, I have found Paul Nation's book to be the most generally useful and informative.   It addresses a lot of the points everyone has made so far, and includes a few more, as well as teaching tips for various different class styles or vocabulary learning issues. I got my copy in Maruzen.

Nation, I S P (1990) Teaching and Learning Vocabulary. Boston, MA: Heinle and Heinle. ISBN#: 0-83484-2863-0

BFN
Colin
:-)

Re: Using Word Frequency Lists | Jerry Talandis Jr. | July 27th, 2002

Dear James, Jake, & Colin,

Thanks for your comments on teaching the most frequent words to beginners. You make some good points, and I can see that I need to put more thought into my idea! This is why I like writing to this list; I can really learn a lot.

Jerry

Re: Using Word Frequency Lists | David Heywood | July 28th, 2002

Hi All,

I thought I'd add my thoughts on learning vocab.

I try to get my students to choose words they want to learn at the end of a lesson. On the flashcards, they write the sentence that the word(s) occurred in during the lesson on one side- minus the word(s) they want to learn. They can write the Japanese in the gap if they want. On the reverse they write the word(s) they want to learn.

This way the word is learned as part of a sentence and has more meaning than a simple translation. Also, rather than learning the translation of a word, they will learn at least one instance of how it's used.

I agree with James that you should try and ensure that students have exposure to these words in the materials they are given. However, I'm not sure if you should use these lists as a starting point. I'd like to find a list of the top ten conversation topics in English. Perhaps focusing on building a basic competence in these topics would be a better starting point for beginners.

David

Re: Using Word Frequency Lists | Rita Balbi | August 5th, 2002

Dear Jerry,

You may find interesting activities to teach vocabulary in chapter 2 of Part A of Materials Development in Language Teaching, by Brian Tomlison (CUP), and Ruth Gairns' Working with words (CUP).

Rita

 

 

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