• Home
  • Login
  • Registration
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS
ESLarticle.com
Tweet
  • Home
  • Articles
  • Blog
  • Members
  • Add Article

Top Categories

Teaching 509
Other 210
Classroom Management 138
Career Development 135
Learning Methodology 121
Study Skills 91
E-Learning/CALL 87
English Language Learning (ELL) 78
Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) 77
Teaching Methodology 76
English Language Teaching (ELT) 74
English as a Second Language (ESL) 64
Teach in Shanghai
Home / Articles / English Language Learning (ELL) / View Article

Publishing

  • Articles
  • Add Article
  • Articles Archive
  • Latest Articles
  • Popular Articles

Latest Articles

Jan 5, 2019

Metacognition in Reading Competency

As related to the reading process, metacognition can be defined as contemplation concerning one's own thinking processes or knowledge of one's own...

Jan 5, 2019

Mass Media Literacy Reflections for Language Instructions

"You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself." Galileo Galilei Mass media forms thrive today. As development...

Nov 30, 2018

Ideas for the First Class with New Learners

~~The first class with new learners can be an anxious one for all concerned – teacher as well as learners. Below are some tips to make that first...

Nov 19, 2018

10 Amazing Hacks for English Learners

10 Amazing Hacks for English Learners It is estimated that there are over a billion English speakers in the world, including native speakers,...

Nov 15, 2018

Building Reading and Writing Knowledge with Very Young Children at Hom

Education Today, December 2013 Building Reading and Writing Knowledge with Very Young Children at Home  Timothy G. Weih University of Northern...

Popular Articles

1113541 Views

5 Creative Ways to Decorate Your Classroom Bulletin Board This Winter

Back to school, fall leaves, Thanksgiving and Christmas all easily lend themselves to great decorating themes, but what to do when those are over...

352966 Views

Three Unique Ideas To Make Your Bulletin Board More Useful

Bulletin boards have long been existent in campuses. They have proven to be such versatile and useful aids in both the learning and teaching...

126598 Views

History of the Chalkboard

Walk into just about any classroom and you will find one: A dark green board on the wall, lined with pieces of chalk and felt erasers. Chalkboards,...

60113 Views

Report Card Comments

For a small minority, writing report cards isn't a big deal. But most teachers generally dread report card writing time. Completing the comment...

39618 Views

The Most Useful American Business Words

The Most Useful American Business Words: Here's a list that will come in handy for any student enrolled in an English as a Second Language (ESL)...


Vocabulary Frequency and why it Matters

by Alex Wright

Dec 9, 2010 English Language Learning (ELL) 3327 Views

Vocabulary frequency is how frequently a word occurs in spoken and written English. It is important because words, which occur more frequently, are more useful to know than words, which occur less frequently. This simple intuitive idea is very often overlooked in teaching and in material design.
 
In order to understand a text, written or spoken, it is necessary to have an adequate vocabulary. Vocabulary knowledge is the most important thing for comprehension of a text. Grammar is also important but students can make pretty good guesses at the grammatical relationships of words if they understand the vocabulary. In order to have adequate vocabulary to comprehend a text scholars estimate it is necessary to know between 95-98% of the running words in a text. The percent of words a student knows in a text is known as vocabulary coverage. Words with a high frequency will help students get an adequate vocabulary coverage of a variety of texts more than words which occur less frequently
 
We know intuitively that a word like dog occurs more frequently in English than a word like eviscerate. Now we have done research on corpera of written and spoken English, which can confirm our intuitions and give us information on the most frequent words of English. As it turns out about 7 percent of the words in all English discourse are the word “the”. The first most frequent 100 words represent around 50 percent of English and include many function words like “to” and “and”. The most frequent 1000 words make up a whopping 75 percent of the words in English discourse. The words that are from 7000 to 8000th most frequent by contrast make up less than 1% of the words in English.
 
If you are asking how can my student learn these wonderful high frequency words than there are a couple of options. The first is to learn them from the General Service List or GSL as it’s often referred to. This list is available online for free and can be found with a simple google search. Students can learn the most frequently occurring words they don’t know through flashcards. The second option is to use graded readers. Graded readers are books, which are designed to use the most frequently occurring fundamental vocabulary of English. This will help supply a context for the words students learn through word cards. If used appropriately, learning from the GSL and graded readers can complement each other well. The word cards help students to learn new words and to advance to more difficult graded readers, and the graded readers help provide context and practice for the new words which student learn.
 
In terms of classroom teaching it is important for teachers to use their intuition about new vocabulary as it comes up in the class. If the word is obviously very rare than the teacher should skip over it or spend only minimal time on the word. Students also can be directed to think about the frequency of new words they meet and consider learning rare words later and focusing on frequent words they don’t know.

Article source: http://eslarticle.com/pub/english-language-learning-ell/21243-vocabulary-frequency-and-why-it-matters.html

  • General Information
Author Info

Author Name: Alex Wright

Most Recent Articles

  • Jan 5, 2019 Mass Media Literacy Reflections for Language Instructions by Alex Wright
  • Nov 15, 2018 Building Reading and Writing Knowledge with Very Young Children at Hom by Alex Wright
  • Oct 22, 2018 5 Significant Reasons to Learn English Language by Alex Wright
  • Jun 16, 2018 Benefits of Using Poetry in Language Learning by Alex Wright
  • Dec 9, 2017 How to Scaffold ELLs in Their Pre-Production Phase of Language Acquisi by Alex Wright

Actions

  • Print Page

Articles Archive

  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019

Random Articles

Classroom Management

Classroom Management Part I - Tips to Avoid a Classroom Horror Scene

This is the first in a series of eight articles about classroom management. In this segment, you will find basic classroom management strategies....

Study Abroad

What Resources Can Students Use to Find Education Info?

Many students are unaware of the numerous awards that are available in Canada that can help them further their studies. Here we will look at some...

Study Skills

How to Get Good Grades - Step 1 - Believe in Yourself!

In order for you to succeed, you have to believe in yourself and in your abilities. Here's a little story to help illustrate this idea: Two high...

Study Skills

Creating a Schedule For Effective Studying Skills

It is relatively common for students to experience challenges when it comes to studying and in fact, most students do not possess great skills. For...

Lesson Planning

Project Evaluation

Conducting a programme to develop the self esteem of children in a class at school is something teachers are often asked to do. Usually it is...

About ESL Article

ESL Article is a private ESL/TEFL site designed and maintained by educators and educational administrators. It was launched in August 2008 with the aim of bringing ESL/TEFL students, parents, teachers and schools information and articles about the teaching profession and learning community.

Icon Group Member

ESL Article is a member of Icon Group Thailand (IGT), a group of ESL TEFL TESOL websites providing educational resources and information to teachers, schools and students around the world. The group was founded in 2003 and now includes 15+ websites covering educational information services, teaching resources and e-learning.

What is ESL?

English as a second language (ESL) is the use or study of English by speakers of different native languages. It is also known as English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), English as an additional language (EAL), and English as a foreign language (EFL).

  • Home
  • Registration
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Help
  • Partner
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
​

© 2019 ESLarticle.com.
Member of Icon Group Thailand - Educating the Future:
TESall All TESOL  Total ESL  ESL Job Feed
TEFL World  TEFL Jobs Overseas  Teach Overseas
Asia TEFL  ESL Powerpoint  Teacher Training