People can usually understand speech or writing even if there are a few unknown words, so 100% coverage is not typically necessary. First, one must know what percentage of the vocabulary in a stretch of spoken or written discourse needs to be known by a learner in order for him or her to understand the discourse.

In order to generate such descriptions, two things are required. What is required for pedagogical purposes are descriptions of the amount of vocabulary which is necessary to be functional in specific communicative contexts, not to match the language level of native speakers. This is still far out of reach for most second language (L2) learners, and it is not surprising that L2 teachers and textbook writers struggle with the sheer number of words that could be taught. found that their New Zealand university undergraduates had an English vocabulary size of about 17,000 word families. Footnote 1 Even very proficient speakers will not know all of these words, Footnote 2 and Goulden et al. stimulate, stimulated, stimulating, stimulates, stimulation, stimulative), this translates into many hundreds of thousands of individual word forms. Given that most word families have several members (e.g. For example, Goulden, Nation & Read ( Reference Goulden, Nation and Read1990) estimated there are 54,000 word families in English.

However, the lexicons of most languages are very large. Thus knowledge of vocabulary is fundamental to all language use, and so must be learned in some manner in order for learners to become communicative in a new language. People use language to communicate and express meaning, and this meaning is essentially conveyed by vocabulary. This article proposes approximate replications of Nation ( 2006), van Zeeland & Schmitt ( 2012), and Cobb ( 2007), in order to clarify these key coverage and size figures. Teachers and learners need to be able to set goals, and as Cobb's study of learning opportunities ( 2007) has shown, coverage percentages and their associated vocabulary knowledge requirements have important implications for the acquisition of new word knowledge through exposure to comprehensible L2 input. Getting these figures right for a variety of text modalities, genres and conditions of reading and listening is essential. But is this the definitive picture? A recent study by van Zeeland & Schmitt ( 2012) suggests that 95% coverage may be sufficient for listening comprehension, and that this can be reached with 2,000–3,000 word families, which is much more manageable. His exploration of the 98% figure through a variety of spoken and written corpora showed that knowledge of around 8,000–9,000 word families is needed for reading and 6,000–7,000 for listening. This important finding prompts an important question: How much English vocabulary do English as a second language (ESL) learners need to know to achieve this crucial level of known-word coverage? A landmark paper by Nation ( 2006) provides a rather daunting answer.

The list below seems long, but when you can use all these words with confidence, your English vocabulary will be fully functional.There is current research consensus that second language (L2) learners are able to adequately comprehend general English written texts if they know 98% of the words that occur in the materials. However, it's essential to learn the right English vocabulary words, so you don't waste your time trying to memorize a huge collection with very little benefit. The remaining 10% you'll be able to learn from context, or ask questions about. With 2,500 to 3,000 words, you can understand 90% of everyday English conversations, English newspaper and magazine articles, and English used in the workplace.

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