Oxford 5000 Vocabulary

[Lavonda Busing]

TheOxford 3000 is a list of the 3,000 core words that every learner of English needs to know. The words have been carefully selected based on their frequency in the language and their relevance to learners. Every word has been assigned a level, from A1 to B2 on the CEFR, guiding learners from beginner to upper-intermediate level on the most important words to learn.

The frequency of the words was measured in the Oxford English Corpus (OEC). A corpus is an electronic database containing large numbers of written or spoken texts that can be searched, sorted and analysed. The OEC contains over 2 billion words from different subject areas and contexts, covering British, American andworld English. Frequency is the most important criterion for deciding the importance of a word: the most frequent 2,000 words in English make up around 80 per cent of almost any English text.

The relevance of the words to English language learners was measured by their frequency in a specially created corpus of Secondary and Adult English courses published by Oxford University Press. This means that the list covers words that learners will come across in class and in their study texts, even if they are less frequent in a general corpus. These include, for example, words for everyday things and places (banana, cafe, T-shirt), words for describing feelings (amazed, annoyed, unhappy) and words connected with studying (dictionary, exam).

The Oxford 3000 is the core word list for learners up to B2/upper-intermediate level. The Oxford 5000 is an expanded core word list for advanced learners of English. It includes an additional 2,000 words at B2-C1 level on the CEFR, guiding advanced learners on the most useful high-level words to learn to expand their vocabulary.

The words of the Oxford 3000 are shown in the main section of the dictionary in larger print and with a key symbol immediately following. The CEFR level for the core sense of the word is shown after the key. If he word has more than one meaning, a small key symbol will indicate each of the meanings that belong to the Oxford 3000. The CEFR level is shown for each of these meanings: some of the secondary meanings may have a higher level than the core sense.

In order to make the definitions in this dictionary easy to understand, we have written them using the keywords of the Oxford 3000. Numbers and proper names are also used in definitions, as are a few language study terms, such as alphabet, noun and tense. When it has been necessary to use a specialist term that is not in the Oxford 3000, the word is shown in SMALL CAPITALS. Where appropriate, a GLOSS (= a short explanation of the meaning) of the specialist term is included in brackets.

The entries for all words in the Oxford 3000 have been re-edited for this edition, using the most up-to-date corpora. Many of these entries have been expanded in order to include more information about the most frequent collocations and examples of different grammatical patterns used with these words.

1.3 billion people around the world speak English either natively or as a second language. This clearly makes English the lingua franca of Earth. But every day more people emerge wanting to learn English faster and easier.

Now, you probably heard about Oxford Practice Grammar before, but what about the Oxford 3000? If you want to work smarter, not harder, and build your English vocabulary fast with high-frequency, high-value words, read on to find out more.

The good news is that when it comes to the English language, Oxford University Press made it easy for you and actually put together a list of the most important words you have to learn to achieve a certain language level. This list is known as the Oxford 3000 and it includes the 3000 most important words in English.

Additionally, there is an extended list of 5000 words called the Oxford 5000 which will give learners a very high coverage of the words they are likely to encounter or use in spoken or written communication in English.

Launched in 2005, the aim of the Oxford 3000-word list is to help learners identify the high-frequency, high-value words that are especially useful when it comes to learning English as a second language.

Ideally, constant effort keeps vocabulary manageable for the casual user, and under 4000-5000 words for introductory articles - those with the shortest names. The three billionth user comes to the wiki in 2007 with English as a second language, very little time and a low bandwidth connection, and walks away with the most useful description of an ecologically-sensitive garden they could possibly have got in that time...

What's wrong with this picture? What realistically can we do about overly complex vocabulary? It takes 1900 words to define the 4000 most common English w:idioms - so what are the worst cases regarding vocabulary creep? How big can we let it get? Highly educated people in the world tend to have at most 15,000 word vocabularies - how to handle profession jargons?

If you want to see why vocabulary creep is not a problem, check out the Oxford English Dictionary. There is a whole lot of words in there, but many of them are never used. They just drift out of the language by themselves.

My initial thought is that as articles get deep or detailed in technical or overly lofty language often used by specialists or people intimately familiar with the subject that an attempt to write a simplied overview to introduce the article or this could move to a separate article or wikipedia and referenced/linked. User:mirwin

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