Word Frequency is listing words‏‎ according to how popular they are in the language. The method of determining the list is by taking a corpus‏‎ of language and simply counting the words in it and how often each one is used.

This usually brings up the following as the most popular:

1. the
2. of
3. and
4. to
5. a

However, no list can be definitive. This is because the popularity of words will depend upon the source of the corpus. For example, a corpus of film and television scripts gives these as the top 5 words which is different from the more general list above.

1. you
2. I
3. to
4. the
5. a

This being the case, word lists can be generated for specific fields or, in the case of general usage, from collating many different word lists.

Another consideration is when is a word the same as another. Most lexicographers‏‎ would agree that table is the same as tables in a list and should not be counted as two different words. Likewise verb forms‏‎ can be counted as the same word: take, takes, taking. But how about spy used as a verb and spy used as a noun? Or gross used to mean disgusting and gross used to mean 12 dozen?

Often because the counting of words is done by software there are no distinctions made between words with the same form and completely different meanings.

Word Usage Statistics

Different statistics exist for how commonly everyday words are used in English. One source suggests that:

• the first 25 words on the list below are used in 33% of everyday writing
• the first 100 words on the list appear in 50% of adult and student writing
• the first 1,000 words on the list are used in 89% of everyday writing

In the Classroom

Although it might seem useful to have the word list in the classroom, it is perhaps too boring to teach the words on the list and make sure the students understand them. Word lists are useful as adjunct tools to your teaching. For example, materials writers will use them to make sure that the materials they create use words within a certain ranking so that the majority of their students will understand them.

(Note that most published ELT books will have gone through a process whereby the vocabulary‏‎ used is checked against a word list to make sure it is appropriate so there is no need for the teacher to do this.)

Word List

These are typical word frequencies based on the British National Corpus.