Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / December 2003

This is completely misleading.  With 3000 words one would not be able
effectively to communicate - though most native British speakers use
far fewer than this in day to day communication.

One needs approximately 100,000 lexical phrases to communicate
effectively and naturally.  However, bear in mind Krashen's
observation that a vocabulary of 100,000 items does not imply either
100,000 fill-in exercises or 100,000 trips to the dictionary.  We have
acquired, rather than formally learned, most of the vast mental
lexicon which we carry prefabricated and ready for use (see "The Power
of Reading" by Stephen Krashen, publ. Libraries Unlimited, Inc.).

Depends what you mean by adequate.

[Native English speaking children arrive in
1st grade of school at age 6 with vocabs in
the 3,000 - 5,000 word range.]

Here's some English wordlists. In ascending order.

220 words

Dolch Word list - most common 220 words in English, arranged in
order of frequency. Occur in 50 -70% of any piece of writing.

Used with slow readers, dyslexics, deaf students, esl students.

Also used by writers of children's material.

Compiled by Edward William Dolch (1889-1961)

600 words

"Basic English" - most common 600 words

1,100

Bramberg, Murray: "1,100 Words you should Know"

3,000

Dale-Challe - most common 3,000 words. Used in rating
             readability levels, standardized elementary
             tests, etc

30,000

Lorge-Thorndike - Most common 30,000 words. Used to develop
         vocabulary section of IQ test back in 1954