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200 High Frequency Words
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14 thoughts on “200 High Frequency Words”
Chris Stolz brought to my attention recently the “lexical approach.”
Wikipedia it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_approach
Since we don’t explicitly teach grammar, all we do is establish meaning for a few words, and then provide CI. Therefore, the only curriculum is a list of words.
And there will be differences between
– spoken and written frequency lists
– elementary vs. high school vs. adult frequency lists
– inter-class frequency lists
I like our “reactive” approach to vocabulary and grammar (no syllabus, but we pop-up it up as it affects comprehension). Much of what we “teach” is a response to personalized content (especially Special Person) or what will compel the class. I am adding “Personal Interviews” as it’s own thread to keep going all year!
This is the most AUTHENTIC way to do it, because the language will be used to convey a message, rather than an external decision to try to make conversation fit a curriculum. Trying to teach words in sets is very UN-AUTHENTIC. When do we ever have real conversations and use all the words that complete a topical set? Horizontal vocabulary instruction is authentic. Vertical, not so much.
The 200 highest-frequency words shared here are from Mark Davies’ Frequency Dictionary. Due to their extremely high-frequency, you will hit these words over the course of the year if you just try to have authentic interactions with students. That said, these words were not chosen from a corpus of spoken language sampled from OUR students. There will be differences. There will be words from Davies’ lists that are very high-frequency, but more so in the written form. My goal is conversational fluency, so I’m not worried about it. E.g. there are a few words in the top 200 that I don’t use naturally/regularly in my conversations.
And our kids will acquire the implicit linguistic system (mental representation) of the language regardless of whether or not the CI is of the highest frequency. If our language has L1 cognates, then there is less learning burden on these words and our kids will acquire a lot of them, even if not the highest frequency words. And of course, there are “fun” words not all that common, but may make for great TPR or a great story.
Of course, this freaks out anyone who wants standardization and sequence.
Kids from different classes taking the next level together would all have different vocabularies. But even efforts to teach kids the exact same words will have the same result. But that is NATURAL! Everyone will share the highest of the high-frequency words – those most useful words.
Having students in class with different acquired vocabularies could enhance the class, students able to acquire from other students, get more reps from other students, and offer more variety of cute answers in the TL. The pitfall is perhaps when students are incomprehensible to other students. Again, happens even in factory-model classes.
And the concept of a “common assessment” would need to bend to mean the same test format with different content, that personalized content from each class.
Brilliantly expressed, your words above make way too much sense for most teachers, Eric. I’m going to go read that comment again after I post this, only slower.
Now, here is what I believe. There is no sequence. I love saying that because it resonates through every layer of the 37 layers/years I have been teaching.
I don’t mean there is no sequence per se. Of course there is. But it’s not something we can understand and codify and label and write down. It is so much more complex than that. It is just not something a human being or even a powerful textbook company could figure out. The entire process happens in the deeper mind, far out of touch from our meddling hands.
Who made it? Who made that under-the-surface process that leads humans to be able to communicate? Who designed this sequence? A Divine Being did it. That’s what I think. And when we mess with what He did, trying to dredge it up and lay it all out on the beach and figure it all out so we can teach it, it dies just like lots of fish in a big net would die if left in the hot sun on the grammar beaches.
Why would we have our kids walk around all that stink when we could have them go for a dip and swim with the parts of speech fishies instead of staring at their dead carcasses on Textbook Beach? And the beaches (schools) would smell a whole lot better. They would smell of the good smell of kids wanting to learn and teachers actually feeling valuable in their buildings, instead of being persecuted for not being good enough.
The reason I believe that language is something divine is because of German opera, and Faure’s Requiem and stuff like that. Wherever words are used properly in the daily work of honoring each other, the best we can. Wherever words are used to uplift people.
No sequence. Scope yes. Scope that is vast, shimmering and galactic scope. Sequence? Not for us. We just speak the language in the classroom. That’s all we get to do in this deal.
There is an in-your-face piece on Scope and Sequence by Robert Harrell in the Primers if anyone is interested.
I have keyed these to the En español 1 text in an effort to work together with my colleagues whose classes orbit around the textbook. I discovered that 80% of them are included in En español 1. Of course, that assumes that one plows through to the 6th and final unit.
I do not know if anyone else uses En español 1. (I am not sure that we will be doing so next year.) I do not know if this effort will be useful to anyone else. (I am not even sure that it will be useful to me.) But the work has been done and hopefully it will prove to be a step toward more authentic language learning.
Yes, yes yes! We have been telling anyone and everyone in and around our district that the hi frequency structures ARE the beginners’ curriculum, and that we layer on more only once we see that the Ss have acquired what we’ve been using so far….
As for common assessments, if the scope is the same, you end up with a parallel story using say, “likes, eats, goes, sleeps” plus a buncha itty bitties…and you write a novel story using these, and the kids from all 3 schools listen to a story employing them, and answer some t/f statements in English. We just finished doing that. Not tremendously informative for us, but satisfies the admins craving for a consistent tool across the schools, reflecting our classroom focus. When we were planning the assessment (a few weeks before we gave it), our conversation was about whether our Ss had acquired a certain word yet- we had agreed at the beginning to focus on a certain group. This convo determined the targets on the test.
In 1st and 2nd grade, it was 10 items; a pair of pictures for each item. We read a statement in Spanish; the students circled the picture that best went with the statement. The girl is happy. The girl is sad.
In 3rd and 4th there were 5-sentence novel short stories using common scope words as discussed above. Almost everyone got 90 or 100 on it- and we have ‘data’ to prove it. While it meets the vague and obtuse instructions given us by the curric office, we didn’t glean much from it, but then again, our Ss get roughly 50 hours per year, so 1st and 2nd graders are still below 100 hours of exposure to L2 now. 3rd graders are at like 120 hours and 4th are at like 170 I figure. I would love to see some kind of comparative data on what students have acquired in a public school classroom setting after x # of hours of T/CI. I’d also love some assessment guidelines beyond ‘no output assessment until after x hours/age/level.’
We don’t tell our teachers in DPS to teach a certain structure at a certain time. We just give them the list. They started out with the list in August. In February they had taught essentially the same structures as the others, without a timetable of when to teach a certain thing. That’s why it’s called high frequency, I guess – the words will be taught. Sounds kind of simple to moi.
In other words, as you said initially, you do not have a sequence, just a scope. I like the distinction. My goal is to limit the scope in order to minimize the strictness of sequencing. I am not sure how it will work. But every thread and comment helps refine our thinking.
…my goal is to limit the scope in order to minimize the strictness of sequencing…
This is very subtle. Yes, we limit scope, and then by extension we limit sequencing. And when we do that we are in a safe place with our instruction. It can’t go out of bounds. When we stay in bounds, they learn.
Hi everyone —
Last fall, I got a new job (same language – French) in the same medium- sized district in a los Angeles suburb. I am dealing with a new set of school site politics after earning my stripes in a leaderless high school. When I left my last position, I had complete freedom, but really aggressive kids, due to the poor history of management.
Now, I have great students, but colleagues fight for a bigger slice of the honors student pie — in all sorts of sneaky ways– mostly bullying and discrediting colleagues. The principal has a laissez-faire attitude but this allows irrational behavior to dominate reasoned dialogue…. There are two teachers in particular who target the more vulnerable and reasonable department members.
The only thing that I and my less-aggressive colleagues can think of to do is fight for a restricted, completely agreed-upon scope…. Since I am the only full-on CI person, this seems to be the simplest, best way to avoid being attacked by the aggressors in the department…
Since I need the non-CI folks to rally with me, our dialogue needs to focus on choosing a good lexicon, at least as a start…
This was a timely dialogue for me— thank you to all of the contributors!
Bon courage!
Hi Ben,
I wasn’t able to find the DPS list of 200 high frequency words on the Primer link. Am I looking in the wrong spot? I love this idea has scope for my 1st year students. Merci!
Hi Alison did you look at the very bottom of the list of articles in there?
Ben this list is just what I need as I prepare for my class for adults next month. I am so glad to know I am free of any formal kind of sequencing. the students will arrange that in their own minds. Thanks a lot.
…I am so glad to know I am free of any formal kind of sequencing….
I love this sentence. It’s like Dorothy was always a click of the heels from home. It is the wondrous design of our brains that does all the sequencing for us – all of it. We were always free to just speak to our kids in the language but we got confused by intellectuals and book companies.
That we have tried to take over a process that is inherently so subtle, majestic, sophisticated and inaccessible and then try to organize it ourselves is an indictment of the the massive amounts of ego and greed that cluttered our poor confused teaching lives before Krashen and Ray opened up the door of that smelly corral.
It’s o.k. now. We are free to teach in another way. Deep breath, everyone.