No matter how much you want, it is impossible to find a single one that would suit each of us. And it's easy to explain. Everyone has a different environment and perception of the world. And also, we study English for different purposes. Therefore, you cannot take a list of words for travel and apply them in a business direction, or vice versa. But you can make a list of topics in which it is important for you to navigate and choose words for each of them. It should be understood that the basic lexical units in any language are verbs and nouns. It is with them that we advise you to start expanding your vocabulary .

Minimum English vocabulary. Verbs

Worth abolishing minimum vocabulary of English language includes not so many verbs. There are only 100 most used words that denote action. Let's take a few of the most important verbs, not forgetting that they can also be divided into categories.

1. stage verbs

prepare- get ready

last- last

start- start

2. verbs of motion

swim- to swim

come- come

climb- climb

3. verbs of feelings

respect- respect

dislike- not to love

admire- admire

4. verbs of thinking and perception

forget- forget

recognize- learn

consider- ponder

Think about what verbs you will need first and build your own minimum English vocabulary with different actions.

Minimum English vocabulary. List of nouns

If you pay attention, you can see that in minimum English vocabulary there are units that can be both an action and an object in this list. Below we will focus on them.

water- water \ water

paint– paint \ draw

cut- cut / cut

answer- answer / reply

iron– iron \ iron

copy– copy\copy

light- light \ light

There are a lot of such "2 in 1" and you can save a lot of time and effort by paying attention to them.

Required vocabulary of English adjectives

We rarely build sentences of two units, so we cannot do without required vocabulary English words expressing different characteristics people and objects. Let's look at some of the most commonly used adjectives:

terrible- horrible

beautiful- beautiful

When you're doing something serious, like learning a foreign language, it's good to know your goals. In language learning, this goal can be the number of words learned.

Read how many specific words you need to learn in order to speak fluently in any language. The article deals with English, but I assure you, in all other foreign languages same.

There are over 1 million words in the Oxford Dictionary. But, of course, no one knows all the words of the English language. AT Everyday life in standard situations, we use no more than 7-10 thousand words. But here we are talking about native speakers. How many words do you need to know in order to feel confident in an English-speaking environment?

Not necessarily a few thousand, sometimes a couple of hundred words are enough. If you learn the most commonly used words, you will be able to navigate in any language situation and conduct full-fledged communication. We have already talked about how to memorize new words. With how many words in stock can you communicate freely?

If you know 400-500 words

This is the most minimal or threshold level that will give you the ability to communicate in standard situations. Once abroad, you will be able to answer questions in monosyllables, somehow navigate the conversation, understand what is happening by intonation. But you cannot claim the title of the best interlocutor.

If you know 800-1000 words

You not only perceive English-language information well by ear, navigate in standard situations, but you can also enter into dialogues if the topic of the conversation is familiar to you.

If you know 1500-2000 words

You will be able to communicate freely throughout the day, unless the topics of conversation are too refined. On the everyday topics you will be able to talk, but in a conversation about art, politics, philosophy, you are unlikely to be able to act as an active interlocutor.

If you know 3000-4000 words

You communicate fluently in an English-speaking environment, read the press and fiction. Most likely, many can consider you an interesting interlocutor.

If you know 8000 words

The fact that you are not a native speaker can only be indicated by an accent, if you have not managed to get rid of it. You can read and write fluently in English, conduct daily and business communication. This dictionary is enough to get higher education abroad. Owning so many words, you will daily, almost unconsciously, replenish your dictionary with new lexical units: you will hear something, read an unfamiliar word, pay attention to an interesting neologism.

If you know more than 10,000 words

An educated native speaker owns such a vocabulary. Have you reached this milestone? In this case, you are unlikely to need our advice on how exactly it is worth learning English words and replenishing the vocabulary.

A few tips for those who want to quickly become a member of live communication in English:

• by itself, an extensive vocabulary will not provide you with free communication, it is better to start learning words with the most commonly used lexical units
• speak. At meetings of conversational clubs or with native speakers via Skype, with English teachers and just friends. Learn not to be afraid to make mistakes
• if you visit conversation clubs, get ready for meetings. Know the topic - learn the vocabulary for this topic
• learn words daily. It is better to memorize 10 words every day, repeating previously learned words, which means memorizing well than to memorize 300 words in one day and forget the next day most of them
• if you already have about 2000 words in your stock, start reading. It is reading that will allow you to enrich the vocabulary in the shortest possible time. How more words you will know the easier and more you will memorize words in the process of reading a new book
• set yourself a goal of 8,000 words. Go to this goal, not paying attention to difficulties.

How many words do you need to know to communicate fluently English language?

The fact that the dictionary of a language contains approximately 300,000 words is only of theoretical interest to a beginner in learning that language. Perhaps the main principle for the reasonable organization of one's studies, especially at the initial stage, is the economy of words. You need to learn to memorize as few words as possible, but do it as best as possible.

We emphasize that our approach is directly opposite to the leading principle of "suggestopedia", with its emphasis on the abundance of words presented to the student. As you know, in accordance with its canons, a beginner needs to be literally "showered with words." It is best to ask him or her 200 new words every day.

Is there any doubt that any normal person will forget all those numerous words with which he was "showered" by such, so to speak, method - and most likely very soon, in just a few days.

Don't chase too much

It will be much better if, at the end of a certain stage of the lesson, you know 500 or 1000 words very well than 3000 - but poorly. Don't be fooled by educators who will tell you that you must first learn a certain number of words in order to "get on with it." Only you yourself can and should decide whether the vocabulary you have mastered is sufficient for your goals and interests.

The experience of learning languages ​​shows that about 400 correctly chosen words can cover up to 90 percent of the vocabulary that you need for the purposes of everyday communication. In order to read, more words are needed, but many of them are only passive. Therefore, with the knowledge of 1500 words, you can already understand quite meaningful texts.
It is better to master the most necessary and important words for you than to constantly rush to learn new ones. "He who chases too much runs the risk of missing everything," says a Swedish proverb. “If you chase two hares, you won’t catch one,” a Russian proverb answers her.

Vocabulary in oral speech in English

Speaking very approximately, about 40 well-chosen, high-frequency words will cover approximately 50% of everyday speech usage in any language;
- 200 words will cover about 80%;
- 300 words - approximately 85%;
- 400 words will cover about 90%;
- well, 800-1000 words - about 95% of what you need to say or hear in the most common situation.

Thus, a well-chosen vocabulary helps to understand quite a lot with very modest effort spent on cramming.

Example: if a total of 1000 words are spoken in everyday conversation, then 500 of them, that is, 50%, will be covered by 40 most common high-frequency words.

We emphasize that these percentages, of course, are not the result of exact calculations. They just give the most general concept about how many words you need approximately to feel confident when entering into the simplest dialogue with a native speaker. In any case, there is no doubt that by choosing correctly from 400 to 800 words and remembering them well, you can feel confident in a simple conversation, since they will cover almost all 100% of those words that you can’t do without. Of course, under other, less favorable conditions, 400 words will cover only 80% of what you need to know - instead of 90 or 100%.

Vocabulary when reading in English

When reading, by correctly choosing and remembering well about 80 of the most common, most frequent words, you will understand about 50% of a simple text;

200 words will cover approximately 60%;
- 300 words - 65%;
- 400 words - 70%;
- 800 words - about 80%;
- 1500 - 2000 words - about 90%;
- 3000 - 4000 - 95%;
- and 8000 words will cover almost 99 percent of the written text.

Example: if you have a text of about 10 thousand words in front of you (this is about 40 printed pages), then, having learned the most necessary 400 words in advance, you will understand about 7000 words that are used in this text.
Note again that the figures we give are indicative only. Depending on various additional conditions, 50 words will cover up to 50 percent of the written text, but in other cases you will need to learn at least 150 words to get the same result.

Vocabulary: 400 to 100,000 words

1. 400 - 500 words - an active vocabulary for language proficiency at a basic (threshold) level.

2. 800 -1000 words - active vocabulary in order to explain; or passive vocabulary for reading at a basic level.

3. 1500 -2000 words - an active vocabulary, which is quite enough to ensure everyday communication throughout the day; or a passive vocabulary sufficient for confident reading.

4. 3000 - 4000 words - in general, it is enough for practically free reading of newspapers or literature in your specialty.

5. About 8000 words - provide full communication for the average European. It is practically not necessary to know more words in order to communicate freely both orally and in writing, as well as to read literature of any kind.

6. 10,000-20,000 words - the active vocabulary of an educated European (on mother tongue).

7. 50,000-100,000 words - passive vocabulary of an educated European (in their native language).

It should be noted that the stock of words by itself does not yet ensure free communication. However, by mastering 1,500 well-chosen words, with some extra practice, you will be able to communicate almost fluently.
As for professional terms, they usually do not present any particular difficulties, since in most cases this is an international vocabulary that is easy enough to master.

When you already know about 1500 words, you can start reading at a fairly decent level. With a passive knowledge of 3,000 to 4,000 words, you will be fluent in reading literature in your specialty, at least in those areas where you are confidently oriented. In conclusion, we note that, according to calculations carried out by linguists on the material of a number of languages, the average educated European actively uses about 20,000 words (and half of them - quite rarely). At the same time, the passive vocabulary is at least 50,000 words. But all this concerns the native language.

Basic vocabulary

In the pedagogical literature, one can find the terminological combination "basic vocabulary". From my point of view, at the maximum level, the vocabulary is about 8000 words. It seems to me that learning more words, except perhaps for some special purpose, is hardly necessary. Eight thousand words will be enough for full communication in any conditions.

When starting to learn a language, it would be wise to make do with shorter lists. Here are three levels that I have found in practice to give a good guide to the beginner:
- level A ("basic vocabulary"):

400-500 words. They are enough to cover about 90% of all word usage in everyday oral communication, or about 70% of a simple written text;
- level B ("minimum vocabulary", "mini-level"):

800-1000 words. They are enough to cover about 95% of all word usage in everyday oral communication, or about 80-85% of written text;
- level B ("medium vocabulary", "medium level"):

1500-2000 words. They are enough to cover approximately 95-100% of all word usage in everyday oral communication, or about 90% of written text.
An example of a good dictionary of the main vocabulary can be considered a dictionary published by E. Klett in Stuttgart, 1971, called "Grundwortschatz Deutsch" ("Basic Vocabulary Fund German language"). It provides 2000 essential words in each of the selected six languages: German, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian.

Home / Articles / How many words do you need to know to communicate fluently in English

Let's take a simple example: The Oxford English Dictionary contains about 1 million words. Don't let this figure scare you, because in order to communicate in English, you do not need to know even a tenth of this number. And yet, how many words does a person need to know for free communication in a foreign language, including English?

We will talk exclusively about oral speech and your ability to maintain a conversation, which means about an active dictionary, and, as you know, it is much less than a passive one. A person can pronounce about 7 thousand words in their native language per day (and this is according to the most conservative estimates). Of course, this is only a quantitative indicator, many words are repeated in our speech. And this is the main key to achieving our goal: fluent communication in English. After all, you can learn a certain number of the most commonly used words in oral speech and - welcome to the world of full-fledged communication in English!

Here are a few basic rules that you should follow in order to start speaking English fluently as soon as possible:

• vocabulary alone will not ensure free communication, you need to start with the most commonly used words
• in order to learn how to communicate fluently in English, you need to try to enter into a conversation every day. Chat with friends, visit conversation clubs - this is the only way you will achieve your goal
• learn the general vocabulary for conversation, there will be no problems with terms and special words, since this is most often international vocabulary
• it is better to memorize 20-30 words every day well than 300, but badly
• By owning 1500 words you can start reading. Reading is one of the best sources vocabulary enrichment
• your final goal is 8000 words. With such a margin, you will feel confident in any situation.

We wish you success in communicating in English!

English learners often ask the question, “When will I be able to speak fluently? How many English words do you need to know for this? Different sources give different answers on this matter, and they have not come to a consensus on this issue. We decided to give an opinion based on the experience of our English teachers.

How many English words do you need to know to speak fluently: myths

The concept of "minimum required vocabulary" is a subtle and ambiguous thing. The Oxford English Dictionary has 500,000 words, a frightening number that is not at all encouraging for English learners. According to statistics, a native English speaker actively uses from 15,000 to 40,000 words. This is the vocabulary that a person uses in writing or speaking - an active vocabulary. Passive vocabulary (words that a native speaker recognizes when speaking or reading, but does not use in speech) reaches 100,000 words. In the article "" you can read in detail about these concepts.

The Internet is now actively discussing the opinion of the "magic thousand English words." According to this hypothesis, it is enough for a person to know only 1000 words of the English language in order to communicate fluently in any language. household theme. Agree, great: given that we learn 10 new words a day, then in just over 3 months we will be able to communicate freely!

At the same time, the vocabulary of a child of 4-5 years old, on average, has from 1200 to 1500 words, and a child of 8 years old - about 3000 words. Does 1000 words give freedom in colloquial speech? We believe that 1000 words are not enough for normal communication at the level of an adult. Where did this number come from then? Perhaps the whole point is in the study of British scientists: they found that any author of an average text (excluding literary masterpieces) uses a vocabulary of only 1,000 words. However, no one specifies that each author has a different composition of this 1000. Each person has his own vocabulary, which he uses when writing texts.

Some people advocate 1,000 words for a different reason: they believe that in order to communicate fluently in English, you need to learn a thousand of the most common words. On the Internet you can even find special frequency dictionaries. However, if you look at such a publication, it becomes clear that you won’t go far with this thousand words: about a third of them are prepositions (in, at, on), different kinds pronouns (he, she, his, her), interrogative words (where, why, what), numerals (first, second), etc. It will be difficult to make a meaningful sentence with such a set. In addition, the authors of dictionaries, when writing irregular verbs, do not indicate all three forms at once, but arrange them in three places according to their frequency. For example, the word keep is included in the first 200 words (according to various sources, 167-169th place), kept - stands at 763-765th place. This approach to irregular verbs inconvenient: it is better to learn all three forms of the verb at once, so it is easier to remember them.

However, not all frequency editions are bad. You can use them, but choose the RIGHT words for communication, in particular verbs and nouns. The verb plays in the sentence leading role, because in any sentence there is an action (go, break, speak) or a state (be, exist) of an object expressed by a verb. It makes sense to study lists of the most frequently used verbs in English. For example, beginners can be advised to master a list of 100 verbs - they are all voiced, given in three forms at once. And those who continue can get acquainted with the list of 1000 most frequent verbs, there you can also see examples of their use in various contexts.

If you completely “lower the bar”, then you can also focus on the dictionary of Ellochka the cannibal: she calmly managed 30 words. However, if you do not want to be a "cannibal" and wish to speak at the level of an adult, you will need to learn more English words.

As vocabulary is reduced, so are the number of feelings you can express, the number of events you can describe, the number of the things you can identify!

As your vocabulary decreases, so does the number of feelings you can express, the number of things you can describe, the number of things you can name.

How many English words do you need to know to speak fluently: reality

Now let's put the mythology aside and decide how many words are needed to communicate fluently in English. And let's turn to statistics again, it, like facts, is a stubborn thing. To understand 80-90% of the text general topics it is enough to know about 3000 words, it is precisely this figure that various studies of foreign scientists claim. Details can be found at lextutor.ca. Oxford learner's Dictionaries also offers 3,000 words for English learners. However, this is still not enough for FREE communication in English. While reading, you will guess the meaning of many words from the context. In addition, some of these 3000 words will be in your passive dictionary, that is, you will recognize many words when speaking or reading, but not using them in speech.

To speak truly fluently, you need to "activate" your passive vocabulary: 3000 in the active vocabulary is confident or First stage. At this level of knowledge, a person can speak on general topics quite fluently and confidently.

Thus, we came to the conclusion that 3000 words is the minimum necessary for speaking in common topics. You can reach this level “from scratch” in about 1.5-2.5 years (depending on the intensity of the classes, the efforts of the student, etc.). To speak truly FLUENTLY, you need to know about 5000-6000 words. Such a vocabulary corresponds to the level, and this is already 3-4 years of learning English from scratch.

You can calculate the time frame in another way: if you tirelessly study 10 words a day, then a reserve of 3,000 words can be acquired in just a year of study. However, do not forget that memorizing words is not enough. To learn how to speak, you need to learn grammar in order to understand how to build a sentence. And most importantly, you need to speak English as often as possible. You need to be able to operate with any vocabulary, then even with 1000 words in your pocket you can, if necessary, communicate in English on a simple topic.

As you can see, for fluent communication in English you need about 3000-5000 words, your desire to speak and hard work. Do you want to make it easier for yourself to memorize so many English words? Try doing it on with one of our teachers. You will significantly expand your vocabulary and learn how to correctly use the studied vocabulary in speech.