The Macmillan Online Dictionary has the best resource for identifying core vocabulary words. Macmillan has identified the 7500 most common words in English and calls this group of words core vocabulary. Macmillan does not publish a list of words in this group, but it has an excellent way of identifying core vocabulary words. When you look up a word in the Macmillan online dictionary, the word will either be red or black. If the word is black, it is not a core vocabulary word. It is just a reference word. If the word is red, however, it is a core vocabulary word. Further, Macmillan has a star system to identify how common the word is.
Macmillan Dictionary 7500 Words List
The Macmillan dictionary has very comprehensive entries for red words. You can see in the above listing for opinion, there is a long list of collocations, phrases, and sentence structures that go with the word. (NOTE: The Macmillan dictionary has both British or American definitions. At the bottom of the entry, you can change to the British or American definition.)
Throughout this website and my listening lessons, I use the term core vocabulary to mean that 7000 words that Oxford Dictionaries identified as 90% of everything native speakers say and write. I check the words in all three dictionaries.
The English Teacher Melanie podcast is a series of listening lessons. Each listening lesson includes a story. I write each story using core vocabulary. Each story is about something that happened in my daily life in Canada. It is easier to remember new words when you can connect the word to a real event.
You might also be interested to know how many words you need to know to be at each level of English. Now, this is a difficult question to answer as it depends on how you measure when a learner knows a word. For example, there will be a big difference between receptive vocabulary (what you can understand, i.e. in reading and listening) and productive vocabulary (what you can use, i.e. in speaking and writing).
In the previous post, I mentioned the Oxford 3000 list. There is also an Oxford 5000 word list, so if you think you know most of the words at the 3,000 word level, then it would be worth focusing on the additional 2,000 word on the Oxford 5000 list.
As with the Oxford 3000, we can also use a text checker to find out what words are on the Oxford 5000 list by copying and pasting a text into the box, e.g. below shows the results (up to B1 level) for the Oxford 3000 list.
Learning to read and use new words may appear difficult at the beginning but with time it is possible to build a good academic and specialist vocabulary. This week you will learn a range of strategies that will help you to understand, learn and record new words.
Below is a list of messages written by some students who used their tutor group forum to exchange tips on how to record and learn new words. Think about the strategies they mention and identify which ones you already use and which ones you would like to try. Type your answers in the boxes below.
If you look up advice and advise, you will find that advice is a noun and should be used in the first sentence. Advise is a verb and should be placed in the second sentence. Dictionaries also provide examples which help to check that your spelling is correct. If you listen to the pronunciation of these two words you will also notice that their pronunciation differs.
While it is good to extend your understanding and use of new vocabulary by looking up new words in your dictionary, it is important to remember that it is not always necessary to know or learn every word in a text. In this section you will consider situations in which you may not need to understand every word, and cases in which you may want to choose to learn only some words.
If your purpose for reading is to get the general gist or to answer some general questions, it may not be necessary to understand all the words that may not be clear. As you have seen in Week 1, reading words in context can help you to guess their meaning without needing to use a dictionary. This involves focusing on the words you do understand and, in particular, using your understanding of the words around the unfamiliar ones in order to guess their meaning.
Having identified the words in the text that are part of your active vocabulary, your passive vocabulary, and those that are completely new to you, it is important to decide if you need to upgrade your knowledge of any of them. Look again at the lists you have made and answer the following questions. Type the answers in the boxes below.
One way to learn and remember new words consists in recording them. You can write the meaning of the new words on the readings in which you found them or in your notes, or you can use post-its or lists.
Alternatively, you can write the three groups of words in different colours. Whichever method you use, you will find that both the process of deciding how to classify new words and the physical act of creating a diagram, a table or a list will help you to recall them when necessary. 2ff7e9595c
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