ROME: 25th October 2005 -- While
word knowledge alone does not guarantee reading ability, for those for
whom English is not their mother tongue, the lack of an adequate
vocabulary is an undeniable impediment. But then
comes the
inevitable question: given that English may have as many as 30,
000
words in fairly regular use, and 60,000 words for the highly literate,
is there a minimum number I should know and what are they"?
There is an answer to both questions. The
answers are based on corpus studies which, in simple terms, are
collections of as many as
one million words taken from spoken/written English. It must
be obvious that if a corpus is representative of the
language, it will provide some answers. And indeed it does.
There are
a number of well-known corpora, the Brown Corpus (USA) and the
British National Corpus being two of them. There is now also a
Salesian corpus, in excess of one million words.
On the basis of the Brown corpus, ten lists, each
containing 1,000
words (1K, 2K...), have been drawn up. Additionally, there is an
academic word list (AWL) with an additional 570 words. And,
readers of
austraLasia would know by now that there is a
further resource called SELECT. A plain 900 word list has now
been extracted from this (or
more accurately, 'term list', because it contains 'multi-word' words,
for
want of a better word!).
Now comes the most useful information. Corpus
studies tell
us, with statistical backing, that 23.7% of any normal text is made up
of just 10 words. Sounds good, but these will not allow much
comprehension of a passage - they are words like the, a, are, is, do...
But the 1K word list referred to above offers an incredible 72.0%
comprehension level. However, try reading a text with 28% of the
words blanked
out and other than being able to guess the topic in general, you will
still be seriously impeded. With the 2K word list, comprehension
will
move to 79.7%. The rate of increase of comprehension has slowed a
little, despite the addition of 1,000 new words. But add the 570
word Academic
list at this point and comprehension jumps to 90%! At 90% you can
read
and understand much of any text other than the exceptionally explicit.
And now the 'icing on the cake':
the random choice of a
Salesian text, compared against the 2K list told the researcher that
76.84% was already comprehensible. This still leaves a little
fewer
than 25% worth of 'blanks' and that can be a problem. Add the
academic
WL and comprehension is now close to 90%. Add the
Salesian WL and you are at 95%, enough to read and follow - and
probably guess the remaining terms. The random text was the Regulations
of the Salesian Society, chosen because with 9,000 words it just
fitted the testing procedures - any larger and the sample would have
been truncated.
The conclusion is clear. If you know the 2,000
word list, then add
the Academic list of around 570, then the additional Salesian list
with another 900, you are guaranteed, all other
things being equal, to understand most Salesian texts.
Around
3,500 words, then, is what you need, and we know what those words
are.
This information should be of considerable assistance to anyone
responsible for the English language development of Salesians anywhere
around the globe - or for their own.
Do you want the 2K, AWL and SWL? I'll
willingly send them to you on
request. They are zipped into a very lightweight file (64
kb). A return note to this email will ensure you receive the item
quickly. JBF
VOCABULARY
While word knowledge alone does not
guarantee reading ability, for those for whom English is not their
mother tongue, the lack of an adequate vocabulary
is an undeniable
impediment. On the basis of the
above information, an English language-learner who knew the 2K list
plus the AWL would have understood 96% of that sentence. 2 words
were not on those lists: vocabulary
and......... The 4% lack of comprehension is no major impediment!
all other things being equal: they
never
are of course!! The phrase here implies that one needs a basic grasp of
English grammar as well as the words.
icing on the cake: the best part of
all
_____________________________
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