How Many Words Should ESL Students Learn?

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How many words do ESL students need to learn?

The answer is not simple. Before trying to answer that question, we need to learn, ‘what is a word?’

Understand Word Families

Look at the verb fly. That is one word. But we can also count flies, flying, flew and even the noun ‘flyer.’ So with one verb we can count five related words.

Some people say we should not count related words. Instead, we should count only word families. A word family is a group of related words, like fly and flies. So, when we talk about the number of words that ESL students need to learn, let’s count only word families.

Number of Word Families

I searched the Internet to learn about the number of word families that English native speakers typically know. Here is what I found learned about the number of words that Americans use.

According to Sebastian Wren PhD, an expert in expert reading and literacy, the number of word families that a typical American knows will depend on many things. It depends on a person’s education, age and the amount of time a person spends reading. A regular reader, according to Sebastian, spends about one hour per day reading.

Dr. Wren suggests these numbers:

• Low education and not a regular reader: 5,000 to 10,000 word families;
• University education, white-collar job and regular reader: 15,000 – 20,000 word families;
• Advanced university degree, professional, reads 2-4 hours a day: 25,000 to 30,000 word families.

Number of English Words

How many words (not word families) are in the English language?

Some people, like the famous linguist David Crystal, say that English has over one million words. Does every native speaker know all of those words?

No way. The one million words includes scientific terms and phrases that most people would never use or read about.

Another Opinion

Dr. Sebastian’s work seems to focus on reading skills. But what about speaking skills? Do ESL students need to know 5,000 to 10,000 word families to speak smartly with native speakers?

Maybe not.

A number of websites suggest different ideas. Many seem to have similar numbers for speaking skills, like these.

• 800 – 1000 words (not word families) is enough to have a basic conversation;
• 2000 words to survive through the day in English;
• 8000 words to have intelligent conversations with a European.

Summary

I started this post with a question. How many words do ESL students need to learn?

With a little online research, here is the quick answer.

• 10,000 to 15,000 word families to read at a college level
• 1000 to 2000 words for a basic conversation
• 8000 words for advanced conversations

I hope that gives you a good answer and a few reasons to continue your learning.

Sources

• http://freelanguagereviews.com/the-process-of-learning-new-foreign-words/
• http://www.qgroupplc.com/category/howmanywords
• http://www.balancedreading.com/vocabulary.html