Reflection on How Much Input Do You Need to Learn the Most Frequent 9,000 Words
NA4C0012 Annie 陳怡安
Vocabulary is the key element to one’s reading ability. As an EFL learner, I know how
important it is to expand my vocabulary size. And one can’t produce output without sufficient input.
Under the influence of Krashen’s input hypothesis, it has been encouraged to improve foreign
language development through extensive reading. To my belief, extensive reading has been one of
the most popular way we teachers encourage our students to do. This research gives us a better
understanding of what materials teachers should prepare for students.
To begin with, former research has shown that the first 9,000 word families provide coverage
of 98% of the running words in a wide range of texts (Nation, 2006). The author then points out that
learners have to meet the most frequent 9,000 word families at least twelve repetitions to learn them.
Then he looks at how much and what kind of input would provide the greatest chance of meeting the
most frequent 9,000 word families. The research questions this study attempts to solve are very
practical to teachers and learners.
The first RQ: How much input do learners need to meet the most frequent 9,000 word families?
The author uses a corpus of novels to see how many tokens would have been read to meet each 1,000
word families. For example, the result shows that learners would need to read about 300,000 running
words to meet the third 1,000 word families an average of 12.6 times. To meet most of the fifth 1,000
word families, learners would need to read a million running words. Lastly, learners would need to
read 3 million tokens to meet the 9th 1,000 word families.
The second RQ: Is this amount of input possible? Native speakers of English increase around
1000 word families per year( Nation, 1990). To reach the same yearly rate, for example, second
language learners need to read 200,000 tokens for the 2nd 1000 word level per year over 7 minutes
per day at a reading speed of 150 words per minute. The numbers look a lot but it is still possible.
Further, the reading texts should be at the right level where no more than 2% of the tokens are
unfamiliar.
The third RQ: What kind of input allow the most words to be met? The author analyzed inputs
other than novels such as journals and movies. He finds that a mixed of written and spoken corpus
provides better opportunities to meet the 1st 9K word families. Learners should read lots of
magazines, newspapers and novels, and watch plenty of movies so that they would have access to
different topics and well-balanced vocabulary learning programs.
It is said that teaching is an art. That is to say, there’s no specific way or formulas for teachers
to follow. Every students have their own learning style and motivations. However, we all wish from
time to time that there could be a guideline for us to follow. We need to know whether we are doing
is useful for our students or not. This study gives us a scientific insight of extensive reading. Now
when we assign outside reading materials for students, we would be more certain of our choices. We
would know what kind of materials we should choose and the goal we want to meet. It does help
teachers tremendously.
On the other hand, as an EFL learner, now I know which way I could improve my vocabulary
size more effectively. According to the study, novel is a great choice. The result also corresponds my
learning experience. When I was in junior high, Harry Potter was a big hit. I read all the episodes in
English because I couldn’t wait for the translated version to come out. I wasn’t intended to improve
my English vocabulary size in the first place. But I did realize my significant improvement at that
time. I learned a lot by my unintentionally extensive reading.
Lastly, I think this study could focus some more on spoken input. Based on my personal
experience, spoken input like TV series which includes daily vocabulary plays an important role of
foreign language learning. However, I understand that written input could provide learners more
chances to understand the depth of vocabulary. Practically speaking, now that we have a guidebook
of learning materials, we know how to learn and teach better.