A reassessment of frequency and vocabulary size in L2 vocabulary teaching

TLDR

English high‑frequency vocabulary has traditionally been defined as the 2,000 most frequent word families, with low‑frequency vocabulary beyond the 10,000th family. This study argues that these pedagogical boundaries should be reassessed. Drawing on frequency, acquisition, usage, graded‑reader, and dictionary evidence, the authors propose expanding the high‑frequency set to the top 3,000 families, lowering the low‑frequency threshold to 9,000, and designating the 3,000–9,000 range as mid‑frequency vocabulary. The authors demonstrate that mid‑frequency vocabulary is essential for proficient language use and outline initial research directions to address its pedagogical challenges.

Abstract

The high-frequency vocabulary of English has traditionally been thought to consist of the 2,000 most frequent word families, and low-frequency vocabulary as that beyond the 10,000 frequency level. This paper argues that these boundaries should be reassessed on pedagogic grounds. Based on a number of perspectives (including frequency and acquisition studies, the amount of vocabulary necessary for English usage, the range of graded readers, and dictionary defining vocabulary), we argue that high-frequency English vocabulary should include the most frequent 3,000 word families. We also propose that the low-frequency vocabulary boundary should be lowered to the 9,000 level, on the basis that 8–9,000 word families are sufficient to provide the lexical resources necessary to be able to read a wide range of authentic texts (Nation 2006). We label the vocabulary between high-frequency (3,000) and low-frequency (9,000+) as mid-frequency vocabulary. We illustrate the necessity of mid-frequency vocabulary for proficient language use, and make some initial suggestions for research addressing the pedagogical challenge raised by mid-frequency vocabulary.