English is one of the languages with the largest vocabulary in the world. The total vocabulary of English currently exceeds one million words and is still increasing.
It can be said that whether you can effectively expand your vocabulary has become the key to success in English proficiency.
In previous articles, I have compiled for you a list of English vocabulary that I personally think is valuable for learning. Today I will summarize and organize them to make it easier for everyone to choose and learn better.
1. "American Heritage Dictionary" One Hundred Essential Words for High School Students
The editorial board of "American Heritage Dictionary" carefully analyzed and selected 100 English words that American high school graduates must know. It became popular on the Internet, and even native speakers rushed to circulate it.
The following are ten words randomly found in this vocabulary list. You can check how many of them you know:
xenophobia
yeoman
ziggurat
tectonic
soliloquy
pecuniary
nihilism
obsequious
equinox
facetious
shock! Is there a feeling that it knows me and I don’t know it?
Don't forget, these are not intentionally selected super difficult words, they are just 100 English words that American high school graduates must know. These words can help you when you need to talk about in-depth topics, current events, and news.
When you want to point out that someone has a keen business acumen, you can use the word "acumen" from the vocabulary:
Jobs's verifiable action shows not only his business acumen but also the audacity and courage he exercised to reverse the power balance between a mighty carrier and a lowly handset supplier.
Jobs' actual actions showed that it was not only his business acumen, but also his audacity and courage that reversed the balance of power between powerful operators and humble mobile phone suppliers.
If you want to express that someone is very circumlocutive, you can use the word "circumlocution":
He is a master at circumlocution, but it's easier for me to understand him now than before.
He talks in circles, but it's easier for me to understand him now than before.
If you hear people discussing the Civil War, you'll most likely come across the word "antebellum":
For most workers, the antebellum period was one of rising wages and higher standards of material well-being.
For most workers, the period before the Civil War was a time of rising wages and material living standards.
During the learning process, the middle school sister also further sorted out these 100 new words and compiled a set of study notes including the British and American phonetic symbols, main parts of speech, Chinese and English concise definitions, etymology, and bilingual examples of each word.
At the same time, the 100 words were divided into 5 groups by the senior students, with 20 new words in each group.
For five days, I will study one group every day, each group contains about 8 pages of PDF content, and finally spend two days reviewing, for a total of seven days to complete.
2. COCA 20000 high-frequency words
COCA is the abbreviation of Corpus of Contemporary American English. Summarize the COCA corpus in three words: large, comprehensive, and new.
Based on COCA's huge 500 million word corpus, Brigham Young University used algorithms to extract the top 5,000 and 20,000 high-frequency words that are most frequently used in American English.
It is worth mentioning that the coverage of these 20,000 high-frequency words is very high. Whether you are preparing to take GMT or GRE, not to mention CET-4 or CET-6, you can use this COCA vocabulary list no matter which authoritative English test it is, or just for the purpose of language expression.
When I memorized words in the past, I always felt that as long as I closed the book, I would not know where to meet them again.
The data of the COCA corpus comes from movies, various TV programs, speeches, novels, academic articles, magazines and newspapers in recent years.
When memorizing the words in this corpus, you can be sure that every word you see comes from a real language environment, and you will have the opportunity to use them in the same context at any time in the future.
COCA word frequency table currently has four learning versions:
1. PDF original COCA 20000 high-frequency word list, "Word Frequency List of American English", each word has separate collocation and synonyms.
You can first click on the downloaded COCA 20000 high-frequency word list in Baidu Netdisk and select "Copy to Oulu Dictionary" to open it.
If you encounter a new word you don't know, you can directly press and hold for one second to check the definition, and click "Pronunciation" to listen to the pronunciation in the built-in pronunciation dictionary.
2. Excel version of COCA 20000 word frequency table, or you can call it an enhanced version of COCA 20000 word frequency table. This version not only adds Chinese definitions and parts of speech, but also each word is marked according to CET-4, CET-6, IELTS, TOEFL, high school entrance examination, or college entrance examination.
You can use the data filtering function of EXCEL to accurately classify related words according to the test you want to take or the target English level corresponding to the test.
Because of the huge number of words in this vocabulary list, it will take a while to memorize it, so finding out the frequency range of words that you want to memorize first can allocate time and energy more effectively.
For example, if you want to prepare for the CET-4 test, you can screen out the recitations marked CET-4 in the word frequency table and have a word frequency ranking of less than 5,000.
3. Excel version COCA 60000 word frequency table
60,000 words is an incremental version based on 20,000 words. At the same time, the 60,000 word frequency table can be sorted by "SPOKEN" spoken word frequency. Prioritize memorizing common spoken words, which is suitable for learners who aim to improve their English speaking level and practical communication skills.
4. COCA’s top 13,500 spoken words list
According to statistics, the first 13,500 words in the COCA word frequency list already cover 99% of spoken words.
This is an mp3 reading version of the first 13,500 spoken words, paired with a txt text file of the words.
The first 13,500 spoken words are divided into nine parts. Each part contains an mp3 English word reading file and a txt text so that we can recite them one by one.
The provided text file can be directly imported into "Zhimi Vocabulary" or similar APPs, and you can use the Vocabulary APP to memorize this part of the vocabulary list. Save the English mp3 to your phone and listen to it from time to time to consolidate the pronunciation of words in your mind.
3. The Economist’s high-frequency vocabulary list
Many friends and senior students reported that "The Economist" was difficult to understand and encountered obstacles everywhere. This is a list of The Economist’s high-frequency vocabulary with Chinese explanations.
"The Economist's High Frequency Vocabulary Glossary" contains 2,706 of The Economist's most frequent and core words, which can be said to be the key to understanding this magazine.
The PDF version is perfectly formatted and easy to print out and study slowly:
There is also an excel version for you to choose from:
4. Collins five-star word frequency list
"Collins Advanced Learner's Dictionary of English" is the first English dictionary that my senior student bought.
The biggest feature of Collins Learner's Dictionary is that by integrating the definitions into complete and fluent sentences, it describes the real context of use of words, so that learners can understand the usage and semantics of words at a glance.
This is a Collins five-star word frequency table with phonetic symbols and concise Chinese definitions (in both Excel and PDF formats). They are drawn from Collins' "The Bank of English" corpus, which contains more than 600 million words.
The word frequency table is classified according to the degree of common use of words, with five stars as the most commonly used words, and so on. Include:
Five-star rating (the most commonly used words, followed by the following levels) 601 words
Four stars 986 words
Three stars 1484 words
Two stars 3047 words
One star 7715 words
For example, five-star words include the most common words such as agree, allow, health, leave, result, talk, understand, etc.
Three stars include words such as unique, carbon, alter, afford, consequence, expand, illustrate, etc.
The one-star rating includes words such as abundant, benevolent, cellulite, extortion, milieu, obliterate, and panoramic.
According to statistics, if you master all the vocabulary of these five stars, you can understand more than 95% of English materials. Reading original books and various popular works should no longer be a problem.
There is also a zero-star rating that contains 22,480 words, including uncommon words such as wadi, vicarious, torpor, sanitarium, and procrastinate. Friends who have room for learning can also use zero-star rating to expand their vocabulary after completing the first five levels of vocabulary learning.
5. Oxford official core vocabulary list
1. "Oxford 3000 Core Vocabulary List"
We must not only learn vocabulary, but also learn smartly and efficiently so that we can catch up when we are lagging behind and have the opportunity to stand out.
The Oxford 3000 Core Vocabulary List is a list of 3000 essential and commonly used words for English learners selected from the Oxford English Corpus (Oxford English Corpus), which contains 2 billion words.
It is designed to help English learners around the world quickly master the most important and core vocabulary in English. Each word in the list is selected one by one by Oxford linguistics experts. According to statistics, you can understand most of the daily English conversations by learning these 3,000 words.
2. "Oxford 5000 Core Vocabulary List"
Oxford 5000 adds 2000 selected core words at B2-C1 levels to the Oxford 3000 words.
3. "Oxford Glossary of Academic English Writing"
The vocabulary list for academic English writing is the most frequent 1,200 words and 370 phrases in academic English writing selected from the Oxford Corpus of Academic English (OCAE), which contains 70 million words.
Students who have academic writing needs, I believe you will feel like you have found a treasure when you see this Oxford academic writing vocabulary list. The vocabulary and phrases you need to use when writing have been classified according to their purpose and use. Just open this vocabulary list and compare it and use it interchangeably.
For example, in the word "example" alone, more than 50 expressions are given in the vocabulary:
"such as"
"as in the case of"
"for instance"
"indicate that"
"is a good example of"
"evidence of/that/for"
"basis for"
"has shown that"
"it has been suggested that"
…
4. "Oxford Academic English Spoken Vocabulary"
The Academic English Spoken Vocabulary is a selection of the core 600 words and 250 phrases in academic English spoken from the British Academic English Spoken Corpus (BASE), which contains 1.2 million words. It is the most frequently used oral expression vocabulary in all-English classes and various English seminars.
Even friends who have no academic needs may wish to include it in your think tank, as long as you need to explain your own views and conduct in-depth discussions on some issues in English. like:
"in idea that"
"(so) in other words"
"as you can see"
"as opposed to"
"for those of you"
"at the level of"
"What I mean by"
5. "A Summary List of the Most Commonly Used English Phrases in Oxford"
This is an official Oxford summary of the most important phrases in learning English. Every phrase and combination included in it must be learned and mastered, and taking the time to understand them can be of great help.
Vocabulary learning is a very important part of the English learning process. It is impossible to learn English well without skipping words.
Give it a little patience, give it a little perseverance, and cooperate with the effective methods and learning materials. Over time, anyone can accumulate something and achieve success.
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