A reassessment of frequency and vocabulary size in L2 vocabulary teaching

• Published in: Language teaching Vol. 47; no. 4; pp. 484 - 503
• Main Authors: Schmitt, Norbert, Schmitt, Diane
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.10.2014
• Subjects: Authentic texts; Dictionaries; English (Second Language); English as a second language; English as a second language learning; Families & family life; Language use; Learning Strategies; Reading materials; Second Language Instruction; Second language learning; Teaching Methods; Vocabulary Development; Vocabulary instruction; Vocabulary size; Word Frequency; United Kingdom > UK
• ISSN: 0261-4448; 1475-3049
• DOI: 10.1017/S0261444812000018

The high-frequency vocabulary of English has traditionally been thought to consist of the 2,000 most frequent word families, and low-frequency vocabulary as that beyond the 10,000 frequency level. This paper argues that these boundaries should be reassessed on pedagogic grounds. Based on a number of perspectives (including frequency and acquisition studies, the amount of vocabulary necessary for English usage, the range of graded readers, and dictionary defining vocabulary), we argue that high-frequency English vocabulary should include the most frequent 3,000 word families. We also propose that the low-frequency vocabulary boundary should be lowered to the 9,000 level, on the basis that 8–9,000 word families are sufficient to provide the lexical resources necessary to be able to read a wide range of authentic texts (Nation 2006). We label the vocabulary between high-frequency (3,000) and low-frequency (9,000+) as mid-frequency vocabulary. We illustrate the necessity of mid-frequency vocabulary for proficient language use, and make some initial suggestions for research addressing the pedagogical challenge raised by mid-frequency vocabulary.