Korean Job Discussion Forums

[kprrok]

All right, today I finally decided that I cannot stand that my students don't even know how to say the word 'the' along with 'and' and many other common words. So I've decided to make a sheet or puzzle or something to teach the 50 most common words in English or whatever number for them.

The basic idea is that I want to get them to recognise the most common words so that their reading will be better. Do any of you have any lists or websites that you know of that could help me out? Or if you just want to post your ideas here.

My list so far: the, and, an, for, at, to, I, you, me, him, her, them, they, his, her

I'm sure there are many more, but that's all I can come up with off the top of my head.

Thanks for any help.

KPRROK

[peppermint]

http://esl.about.com/library/vocabulary/bl1000_list1.htm

There's a list of the thousand most common words in English, activities too

[posco's trumpet]

The most common words, as well as their relative frequencies, will depend on the corpus upon which the list is based. It's not clear where about.esl/Jerry Jones got their list. I suggest you look at the
Companion Website for:Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: based on the British National Corpus. (Geoffrey Leech, Paul Rayson, Andrew Wilson (2001) pp. 320, Longman, London. ISBN 0582-32007-0 (Paperback)
http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/ucrel/bncfreq/

The frequency lists at this site (at http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/ucrel/bncfreq/flists.html) include:

CHAPTER 1: Frequencies in the Whole Corpus (Spoken and Written English)

.1: Alphabetical frequency list of the whole corpus (lemmatized): list key
complete lists without frequency cut-offs: unix compressed 5.3Mb or WinZip compressed 4.4Mb
List 1.2: Rank frequency list for the whole corpus (not lemmatized): list key

CHAPTER 2: Spoken and Written English

List 2.1: Alphabetical frequency list: speech v. writing (lemmatized): list key
List 2.2: Rank frequency order: spoken English (not lemmatized): list key
List 2.3: Rank frequency order: written English (not lemmatized) list key
List 2.4: Distinctiveness list: contrasting speech and writing (ordered by log likelihood): list key

CHAPTER 3: Two Main Varieties of Spoken English Compared

List 3.1: Alphabetical frequency list: conversational v. task-oriented speech (lemmatized): list key
List 3.2: Distinctiveness list: contrasting conversational v. task-oriented speech (not lemmatized): list key

CHAPTER 4: Two Main Varieties of Written English Compared[list]
List 4.1: Alphabetical frequency list: imaginative v. informative writing (lemmatized): list key
List 4.2: Distinctiveness list: imaginative v. informative writing (not lemmatized): list key [/ist]
CHAPTER 5: Rank Frequency Lists of Words within Word Classes (Parts of Speech) in the whole corpus

List 5.1: Frequency list of nouns (by lemma): list
List 5.2: Frequency list of verbs (by lemma): list
List 5.3: Frequency list of adjectives (by lemma): list
List 5.4: Frequency list of adverbs (not lemmatized): list
List 5.5: Frequency list of pronouns (not lemmatized): list
List 5.6: Frequency list of determiners: list
List 5.7: Frequency list of determiner/pronouns: list
List 5.8: Frequency list of prepositions: list
List 5.9: Frequency list of conjunctions: list
List 5.10: Frequency list of interjections and discourse particles: list

CHAPTER 6: Frequency Lists of Grammatical Word Classes (based on the Sampler Corpus)

List 6.1.1: Alphabetical list: the whole sampler corpus (spoken and written English): list
List 6.1.2: Rank frequency list: the whole sampler corpus: list
List 6.2.1: Alphabetical list: spoken v. written English: list
List 6.2.2: Rank frequency list: spoken English compared with written English: list
List 6.2.3: Rank frequency list: written English compared with spoken English: list
List 6.2.4: Distinctiveness list: spoken v. written English: list
List 6.3.1: Alphabetical list: conversation v. task-oriented speech: list
List 6.3.2: Distinctiveness list: conversation v. task-oriented speech: list
List 6.4.1: Alphabetical list: imaginative v. informative writing: list
List 6.4.2: Distinctiveness list: imaginative v. informative writing: list

Here are a few more lists, which, in addition to being slightly different from each other, are each a bit different from the jones list: http://rinkworks.com/words/wordfreq.shtml

Here's information based on the Brown (University) Corpus and the corpus of Academic English (developed by Paul Nation of the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): http://www.edict.com.hk/TextAnalyser/wordlists.htm

[SweetBear]

I would be more inclined to focus on the correct usage of the most common words. I would think that simply memorizing them would be redundant. Just my opinion.
Sb

[kprrok]

[MixtecaMike]

Don't forget got and me a name I don't call myself.

I will looking at posco's list to see where my two favorite English words fit in the greater scheme of things.