How many words (HMW)?

Share on Facebook

Anonymous

#452354 Wed, 12 Dec 07 09:39 AM

Hi,

Could anyone point me to a source that lists how many words - on an average - a native speaker must know at various levels / classes in an English speaking society (The U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia) ? Here are the two categories:

1. Students: entering junior high, highschool, college at various levels (B.S. / M.S. / Ph. D)
2. Jobs: laborer, office clerk, engineer, medical doctor, lawyer, journalist.

Thanks and Best Regards,
Hoa Thai

Anonymous

Regards

Arvsworld

#452373 Wed, 12 Dec 07 11:04 AM

It's generally not the number of words you know but how well you use them (to express your thoughts clearly) that indicate your mastery level.

Tests like the TOEFL and the IELTS rate your mastery of English for the academic and work related settings.

Knowing all the words in the dictionary is useless if you can't create complete, coherent sentences. One good way to practice and improve your language skills is to try saying something in several different ways. This kind of exercise forces you to keep adding new words to your vocabulary and to explore different sentence structures.

Regarding the word lists you were asking about, you can search for those things using google or any other search engine.

Arvsworld

Joined on Sun, Feb 26 2006

Here, There and Everywhere

Full Member (178)

What? Where? When? How? Who? Why?

Numbers, Vocabulary, Sentence structures, IELTS, TOEFL

Hoa Thai

#452480 Wed, 12 Dec 07 04:15 PM

Arvsworld wrote:
It's generally not the number of words you know but how well you use them (to express your thoughts clearly) that indicate your mastery level. Tests like the TOEFL and the IELTS rate your mastery of English for the academic and work related settings. Knowing all the words in the dictionary is useless if you can't create complete, coherent sentences. One good way to practice and improve your language skills is to try saying something in several different ways. This kind of exercise forces you to keep adding new words to your vocabulary and to explore different sentence structures. Regarding the word lists you were asking about, you can search for those things using google or any other search engine.

Hi,

I simply need the statistical information from a reliable source (if possible sole source) for my report.

Regarding your advice, I beg to differ. Words to language are no different from sounds to music, ingredients to cooking, or elements to chemistry. One of the important aspects of language learning is vocabulary enrichment. I agree with you that we must use all things that we've learned to their perfection. However, the more words we know the more precisely / artfully we can express our ideas. If happy is the only word that we know, how could we be cheerful / glad / delighted / pleased / thrilled / satisfied?

I cannot imagine we can cook a variety of good dishes with only salt – Would you like to take the title salty master? Smile [:)]