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

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...