[Corpora-List] Numbers of English vocabulary required for students

[Jakub Marecek]

Hello folks,

see http://www.infogreta.org/magazine/articles-9-1.htm or
one of books by Norbert Schmitt if you don't like the 2000
number. Paul Nation was (supposedly) using corpora of spoken
English to arrive at the artificially low number of 2000
while a decent coverage of real written English would
(again, supposedly) require learning many more words
(word families).

Best
Jakub


Brett Reynolds napsal(a):
> On Oct 1, 2006, at 8:49 PM, Su-hsun Tsai wrote:
>>
>> I would like to know how many words of English vocabulary required for 
>> a high school graduate entering a college/university program?  Do you 
>> have a similar requirement for students entering into high schools?
>>
> Leaving aside the question of what it means to "know" a word...
> 
> In Ontario, Canada, I know of no school that gets as specific as to have 
> a minimum number of known words as an entry requirement. However, from a 
> practical viewpoint, you should have a look at Paul Nation's work with 
> word families. Paul's results suggests that the 2000 most common word 
> families, plus the 570 word families of Averil Coxhead's Academic Word 
> List would be a minimum for most non-native speakers of English to begin 
> tertiary education.
> 
> Best,
> Brett
> 
> <http://english-jack.blogspot.com>
> 
> -----------------------
> Brett Reynolds
> English Language Centre
> Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
> Toronto, Ontario, Canada
> brett.reynolds at humber.ca <mailto:brett.reynolds at humber.ca>
> 
> 
>