How many words do students need to 'know' in order to be proficient in English? This is a question that led my colleagues and I to conduct research into lists of commonly used words. We compiled a list of 2,709 words in English of common words for general and academic purposes which cover 90% of the running words in any text. We ran some vocabulary tests on a number of students to see if there was a correlation between success at proficiency tests of English and the number of words known from our list, which we named the BNL2709. The data clearly showed that there was a 'threshold' of lexical knowledge—students who knew 80% or more of the 2,709 words were proficient in English, while those who didn't continued to struggle in their efforts to learn English.
Being able to see a profile of a text showing which words are commonly used words is an invaluable tool for teachers. If you want to try this technique, point your browser at http://lextutor.ca/vp/bnl and copy and paste any text into the window provided. Press the SUBMIT button, and you will see a colour-coded vocabulary profile of your text.
In fact, the BNL2709 words from a convenient lexical syllabus that can be used as a supplementary vocabulary book for any English course. If you want more information about the background research and pedagogical principles underlying the BNL2709 word list approach, you can watch a few short slidecasts at http://bnl2709.edublogs.org/colour-of-words.
We have piloted the book in Turkey, UAE and Mexico, and have had positive responses from students and teachers who participated. We are interested to see if this word list approach would work with Russian students. I'd be happy to get any suggestions, ideas or comments from Russian teachers who are interested in this area.
Thanks!
