What is 1000 words worth? Vocabulary size and language competency
Dr Angela Gallagher-Brett, University of Southampton, September 2013
What is a goal of 1000 words in a language? How many of us have any idea even if we are
professional linguists? It’s been suggested that if you ask language teachers to guess the size of their
vocabularies in their mother tongue, they’ll come up with answers ranging from a few thousand to a
few million words.1 So there’s little agreement there then. And the indications are, perhaps
unsurprisingly, that language learners tend to exaggerate the numbers of words and phrases they know
in another language.2
So what do we know about vocabulary size and language competence and fluency?
Well, research suggests that if you’re a native speaker of a language, then you’re likely to talk at a rate
of 130-200 words per minute.3 A five-year old English native speaker, for example, will have an
overall vocabulary of about 4000 word families while a graduate will have about 20,000.4 As a native
speaker, you can also expect to add about 1000 words to your vocabulary each year up until the age of
25.5
For language learners, there are some big numbers here which probably seem rather daunting. And, of
course, it is not reasonable to expect the vast majority of learners to match the numbers of words
known by native speakers. But evidence suggests that a language user with a relatively small amount
of vocabulary can get a lot done.
Writing in the Guardian, Joshua Foer describes his experiences of learning Lingala (a language
spoken in parts of both Congos and Angola) and proposes that the first 1000 words in a language are
enough to help you to ‘hit the ground running’
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/nov/09/learn-language-in-three-months.
Anne Merritt in The Telegraph goes further, arguing that as little as 120 words can be enough to ‘get
by’ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationadvice/9816185/Foreign-languages-how-tomemorise-vocabulary.html.
These writers are not suggesting that a list of 1000 random words will magically open doors for
aspiring language learners. What they are proposing is that knowledge of key words and phrases can
enable learners to achieve some success in understanding and communicating in another tongue.
These are the small numbers of words that occur very frequently and that are known by everyone who
uses the language.6 Take the first paragraph of this article, for example, which consists of 88 words
(including some abbreviations). The number of English words you actually need to know to be able to
read and understand it is far fewer than 88 because words like ‘so, in, of, that, a, is, the, and,
language’ etc. all occur more than once. Indeed, studies have shown that the first 1000 high-
1
Meara (2005)
Moir & Nation (2008)
3
Hilton (2008)
4
Nation and Wareing define a word family as a base word with its forms (inflected and observed)
5
Meara (2005)
6
Nation & Wareing (1997)
2
frequency words in a language can provide you with around 72% coverage of a written text.7 So
although you would not find reading easy, you would be able to understand a high proportion of the
words you encounter. And that means being able to make sense of notices, menus and timetables – all
very useful. With 1000 words, you should also be able to carry out a variety of really useful social
functions. In her article, Merritt suggests that this includes giving directions in a taxi. But you could
also be able to interact socially by greeting people, taking part in short dialogues using common
everyday phrases, making arrangements, asking questions, asking for what you need, talking about
yourself and your family, your friends and your education and job. This could really help you to
understand and communicate in particular situations in countries where the language is spoken and in
dealing with speakers of the language here in the UK.
Achieving the goal of 1000 words in another language won’t mean that learners are fluent but the
good news is that ‘a relatively small amount of well-chosen vocabulary can allow [them] to do a lot.’8
References
Foer, J. (2012) How I learned a language in 22 hours, The Guardian, 9 November 2012
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/nov/09/learn-language-in-three-months
Hilton, H. (2008) The link between vocabulary knowledge and spoken L2 fluency, Language
Learning Journal, 36(2), 153-166.
Meara P. (2005) Teaching and learning vocabulary, in: Coleman, J.A. & Klapper, J., Eds. Effective
Learning and Teaching in Modern Languages. London: Routledge.
Merritt, A. (2013) Foreign languages: How to memorise vocabulary, The Telegraph, 5 February 2013
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationadvice/9816185/Foreign-languages-how-tomemorise-vocabulary.html
Moir, J. & Nation, I. (2008) Vocabulary and good language learners, in: Griffiths, C., Ed. Lessons
from Good Language Learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nation, I. (2001) Learning Vocabulary in another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Nation, I. & Wareing R. (1997) Vocabulary size, text coverage and word lists, in: Schmitt, N. &
McCarthy, M., Eds. Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 6-19 http://www.fltr.ucl.ac.be/fltr/germ/etan/bibs/vocab/cup.html.
Website
Council of Europe Common European Framework for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment
http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/cadre1_en.asp
7
8
Nation (2001)
Nation (2001: 9)