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It’s impossible to count all the words in the entire language, and new words are added all the time. Of course, there are more than 7000 words used in English. That’s why it seems to be taking so long! To move from the intermediate level to the advanced or fluent level, you need to learn 6000 more words. Native speakers use just 7000 words for 90% of everything they say and write! This is the most important part of the chart. That’s why it was so easy to get to the intermediate level.Ĭongratulations! You already know at least 75% of what native speakers say and write! You need to know 100 words to understand 50% of everything native speakers say and write, and 1000 words to understand 75% of all the words used in common, everyday English. In this chart, a lemma is the base form of a word for example the lemma climb includes the different word forms climbs, climbing, and climbed.Īccording to this chart, you only need to know 10 words to understand 25% of everything native speakers say and write. The people who put together the Oxford Dictionaries examined the OEC to see how many words native speakers actually use. It has information on all the words native English speakers use in speaking and writing. The Oxford English Corpus (OEC) is a collection of texts (books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, emails, speeches etc.) that shows how the English language is used in real situations. This is a chart from Oxford Dictionaries website. Here’s why: (Source: Oxford Dictionaries) It seems to be taking a long time to learn English. You can’t express yourself as clearly as you would like to, or as clearly as you can in your native language (the first language you learned to speak and are fluent in, and the language you use every day). You learn lots of new words but you can’t remember them all and when you want to explain your opinion, you can’t find the right words to use. When you read something, you still have to look up many words in the dictionary. It’s taking more and more time now just to make small improvements. Then, something happened, and you’re not quite sure what.

One day you realized you could have a basic conversation with someone in English. Before you knew it, you could form a sentence. It was easy to learn words like dog and house and cheese. Why is it taking so long to learn English?ĭo you remember when you started learning English? It was so easy and fun! You learned so many new words.