Which English Vocabulary Words to Learn

How many words should you learn in English? There are many things you could learn, but where to start? More importantly, which words should you learn? This blog post will answer these questions with 2 super easy and fast tips.

How Many Words Does the English Language Have?

Do you know how many words are in the English language? Well, neither do experts. In fact, many say that there are more than 1,000,000 words! Others claim that there is no way to know for sure. Why? This is because new words are add to the language every month. Actually, Reader’s Digest reported that 600 new words were added to the dictionary in April 2020 alone.

With so many words, where do you even begin?

First, yes there are +1 million words in the English language. That does not mean that speakers of English use all of these words. Honestly, speakers use about 170,000 of these words.

Still too many words?

Okay, where’s the real secret to learning which words to learn in English.

Be consistent

Before I tell you which 1 thing you need to do to learn these vocabulary words, you have to know that you will not learn much without becing consistent. Often times you don’t learn vocabulary because you are not consistent. Create your language learning goal. Learn in small amounts. Review. Practice. Then, repeat. Those are the simple keys to not only learning English, being fluent, but the foundation for knowing which English vocabulary words to learn.

Now, on to which words to learn.

How to Choose Which Words to Learn in English

This www I released episode #74 of the Living in English: 365 podcast. Listen below to learn more details on this topic.

As I said earlier, English has over a million words in the language. Though we only use a smaller percentage of those, that’s still a lot of words, isn’t it? Here’s how to determine which words to learn:

• decide your why
• learn those words

Here’s what I mean. If you are an engineer, doctor, nurse, etc., then you need specific vocabulary to do your job well. Focus on those words. That’s a goal. If that’s your goal, then I’ve just done the difficult part in deciding for you. These are career specific words. Or, in other words, professional vocabulary.

So, maybe you’re thinking, “I don’t need English for my career. I just need English to live my life–daily English.”

Fantastic.

You still must do the two things I listed above: decide your why and then learn those words.

No matter what your goal is for learning English, or any language, learn the most used words. These frequently used words will make your life easier. How? Because you will hear these words all of the time, and use them the most, you will learn them faster. You will remember them because you use them often—you can’t forget them. These words only total about four-thousand or less. It’s that simple, people!

Actually, I have already spoken about this in other blog posts and podcast episodes. Click here to see a list. Once you focust on these commonly used words, you’ll feel more relaxed. You’ll also learn them faster and not forget them. That’s a terrific thing.

Takeaways

English has a lot of words. They can be tricky to learn, and there are a lot. To know which words you should learn, think about your goal. Why are you learning English? What are you trying to accomplish? After that, choose words that fit your goal. Which are these words? They are the words specific to your profession or career. In all circumstances, focus on the 4000 most used words in the English language. These words will allow you to understand what’s being said no matter the circumstance.

So, what are you waiting for!? Start learning now? Don’t know how to learn Vocabulary? Try this winning strategy.