* Blog 016 - English Word Frequency - Intermediate Level

For ESL learners some knowledge of word frequency is useful. Online there are various sources of word frequency data, just as there are in printed media, such as the Longmans Dictionary of Contemporary English, or the Oxford Advanced Learners English Dictionary. These printed sources only note the 3,000 most frequently used words in both written and spoken English.

How about a resource that goes further, goes beyond 3,000 words, or beyond even 10,000 words...a resource that goes beyond 50,000 words, all the way up to the 86,800 most frequently used words in English. Content analysis of such a resource can nurture many insights into the English language and into the underlying language culture. Familiarity with such a resource may also aid your prioritization of vocabulary acquisition.

Such a resource can be found at Wordcount, a site that provides useful frequency information in a graphically unique way.

In the words of its author,

"WordCount™ is an artistic experiment in the way we use language. It presents the 86,800 most frequently used English words, ranked in order of commonness. Each word is scaled to reflect its frequency relative to the words that precede and follow it, giving a visual barometer of relevance. The larger the word, the more we use it. The smaller the word, the more uncommon it is.

WordCount data currently comes from the British National Corpus®, a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent an accurate cross-section of current English usage".

You can access this resource at: http://www.wordcount.org/index2.html

Then Click "Launch Wordcount"

Find the ten most frequently used words in English, or the 100, or 1,000 or 10,000 most commonly used words. It can help you to gain an improved understanding of the language.

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