A person may well serve as a very objective indicator of his intellectual development, high level of culture and good education... Society, as a rule, perceives such a person as intelligent and creative. It is initially easier for such a member of society to find a good and more promising job, he moves faster and more successfully along career ladder and has a reputation for being more likely to listen to his advice and guidance.

What does the concept of human vocabulary mean?

Simply put, it is a set of words that a person owns. According to modern scientists, a person's vocabulary is of two types: active and passive. The first consists of words that are used both in writing and in speaking. Passive, in turn, is the set of words that is recognized and understood, but not used by a person. As a rule, the latter is several times superior to the former.

What is the vocabulary of the Russian language?

According to recently obtained statistics, our language has almost 500,000 words, but only 3,000 are used in everyday speech. An average student uses 5,000 words, and an adult's vocabulary is 8,000.

In other languages, the situation is almost the same.

Can the set of words used be increased?

Very often in everyday conversations one hears about the tongue-tied language of one or another common acquaintance. It is often possible to find the opinion that the gift of oratory is given to us at birth and subsequently a person's vocabulary (as a predisposition, for example, to some bad habits or diseases) cannot be corrected. This is nothing more than a delusion! Can! Can be supplemented, corrected and improved! And this is not so difficult to do, the main thing is to set a goal.

How to improve a person's vocabulary. List of simple tips

• Make a list of the words that you will surely use day in and day out. Keep this list as long as possible. Ready? Now, using the explanatory dictionary or the dictionary of synonyms, write several of its alternative variants in front of each word. For example, “interesting” is remarkable, entertaining, curious, noteworthy, interesting. Try to remember them and use each of the written options at least once during the day. Only in this way can they be deposited in our memory.
• Read as much as you can. Start with books by those authors who are close and enjoyable to you. And only gradually it will be possible to move on to more serious literature. If an unfamiliar word is found in a work, it is recommended that you look at its meaning in the dictionary, and if you want to remember it, read it aloud and repeat it mentally several times. Why is it so? - Modern scientists have proved that what has been uttered at least once is better deposited in human memory.
• Write. If you have no one to write long, warm and full positive emotions letters, use the example of Demosthenes: rewrite other people's articles, your favorite works of art, write out poems or sayings of the greats that have stirred something in your soul in a special notebook.
• Crosswords are also quite useful for developing vocabulary. But in this case, I would like to warn you - the publications that print them must be known and verified.
• If you have to spend most of your time on the road or behind the wheel, and there is simply a sorely lack of free time for the aforementioned, you can resort to using audiobooks, the choice of which is now quite large, and the quality is quite decent.

With these proven methods, you can gradually increase your vocabulary: English, Chinese, French and any other. But we should not forget that without making efforts, you are unlikely to be able to make your speech more melodic, informative and expressive.

The fact that the dictionary of the language contains about 300 thousand words is only of theoretical interest for a beginner to learn this language. Perhaps the main principle for the rational organization of their studies, especially at the initial stage, is the economy of words. You need to learn to memorize as few words as possible, but do it as best you can.

Let us emphasize that our approach is directly opposite to the leading principle of "suggestionstopedia", with its emphasis on the abundance of words presented to the student. As you know, in accordance with its canons, the beginner must be literally "showered with words." It is best to ask him or her 200 new words every day.

Is there any doubt that any normal person will forget all the many words that he was "showered" with in this, if I may say so, method - and most likely very soon, just a few days later.

Don't chase much

It will be much better if at the end of a certain stage of the lesson you know 500 or 1000 words very well than 3000 - but poorly. Don't be overwhelmed by educators who will assure you that you need to learn a certain number of words first in order to "get on board." Only you yourself can and must decide whether the vocabulary you have mastered is sufficient for your goals and interests.

Experience in language learning shows that about 400 correctly chosen words can cover up to 90 percent of the vocabulary you need for everyday communication. It takes more words to read, but many of them are only passive. Therefore, with knowledge of 1500 words, you will already be able to understand sufficiently meaningful texts.

It is better to master the words that are most necessary and important to you than to constantly rush to learn new ones. “Anyone who has chased too much runs the risk of missing everything,” says a Swedish proverb. "If you chase two hares, you won't catch a single one," a Russian proverb answers her.

Oral vocabulary

Very roughly, about 40 correctly chosen, high-frequency words will cover about 50% of word usage in everyday speech in any language;

• 200 words will cover about 80%;
• 300 words - about 85%;
• 400 words will cover about 90%;
• well, 800-1000 words are about 95% of what will need to be said or heard in the most ordinary situation.

Thus, a well-chosen vocabulary helps to understand quite a lot with a very modest effort spent on cramming.

Example: if only 1000 words are said in everyday conversation, then 500 of them, that is, 50%, will be covered by 40 of the most common high-frequency words.

We emphasize that these percentages, of course, are not the result of precise calculations. They just give the most general concept about how many words it will take to feel confident, entering into a simple dialogue with a native speaker. In any case, there is no doubt that, having correctly chosen from 400 to 800 words and memorizing them well, you can feel confident in a simple conversation, since they will cover almost 100% of those words that you cannot do without. Of course, under other, less favorable conditions, 400 words will cover only 80% of what you need to know - instead of 90 or 100%.

Reading vocabulary

When reading, having correctly chosen and well remembered about 80 of the most common, most frequent words, you will understand about 50% of the simple text;

• 200 words will cover about 60%;
• 300 words - 65%;
• 400 words - 70%;
• 800 words - about 80%;
• 1,500 - 2,000 words - about 90%;
• 3000 - 4000 - 95%;
• and 8000 words will cover almost 99 percent written text.

Example: if you have a text of about 10 thousand words in front of you (this is about 40 printed pages), then, having learned the most necessary 400 words in advance, you will understand about 7000 words that are used in this text.

Note again that the numbers we give are only indicative. Depending on a variety of additional conditions, 50 words will cover up to 50 percent of the written text, but in other cases, you will need to learn at least 150 words to get the same result.

Vocabulary: 400 to 100,000 words

• 400 - 500 words - active vocabulary for language proficiency at the basic (threshold) level.
• 800 - 1000 words - active vocabulary for explaining yourself; or a passive vocabulary for basic reading.
• 1500 - 2000 words - active vocabulary, which is quite enough to ensure everyday communication throughout the day; or passive vocabulary sufficient for confident reading.
• 3000 - 4000 words - in general, it is enough for practically free reading of newspapers or literature in the specialty.
• About 8000 words - Provide complete communication for the average European. You practically don't need to know more words in order to communicate freely both orally and in writing, as well as to read literature of any kind.
• 10,000-20,000 words - active vocabulary of an educated European (in their native language).
• 50,000-100,000 words - passive vocabulary of an educated European (in their native language).

It should be noted that vocabulary by itself does not yet ensure free communication. At the same time, having mastered 1,500 correctly chosen words, with some additional training, you will be able to communicate almost fluently.

As for professional terms, they usually do not present any particular difficulties, since in most cases it is an international vocabulary that is easy enough to master.

When you already know about 1500 words, you can start reading at a fairly decent level. With a passive knowledge of 3,000 to 4,000 words, you will be fluent in reading specialty literature, at least in those areas where you are confident in your orientation. In conclusion, we note that, according to the calculations carried out by linguists on the material of a number of languages, the average educated European actively uses about 20,000 words (and half of them are quite rare). In this case, the passive vocabulary is at least 50,000 words. But it's all about native language.

Basic vocabulary

In the pedagogical literature, you can find the terminological combination "basic vocabulary". From my point of view, at the maximum level, the vocabulary is about 8000 words. It seems to me that it is hardly necessary to learn more words, except perhaps for some special purpose. Eight thousand words will be enough for full-fledged communication in any conditions.

When starting to learn a language, it makes sense to get by with shorter lists. Here are three levels that I have identified in practice as providing a good guideline for a beginner:

• level A("basic vocabulary"):

400-500 words. They are enough to cover about 90% of all word usage in everyday oral communication or about 70% of a simple written text;

• level B("minimum vocabulary", "mini-level"):

800-1000 words. They are enough to cover about 95% of all word usage in everyday oral communication, or about 80-85% of the written text;

• level B("average vocabulary", "copper-level"):

1500-2000 words. They are enough to cover about 95-100% of all word usage in everyday oral communication or about 90% of the written text.

An example of a good dictionary of the main vocabulary is the dictionary published by E. Klett in Stuttgart, 1971, entitled "Grundwortschatz Deutsch" ("The main vocabulary German language It contains 2000 essential words in each of the selected six languages: German, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian.

Eric W. Gunnemark, Swedish polyglot

Vocabulary is a set of words in a person's native language, understandable to him by meaning and used in communication. It consists of words that are constantly used in oral and written speech, as well as words that are understood by meaning during a conversation or reading literature.

There are two types of vocabulary:

• Active. This is the vocabulary that a person uses every day in speech when communicating with people around him.
• Passive. These are words that are not used in communication, but are familiar by ear and content.

Active and passive vocabulary contain unequal word volume indicators. The active vocabulary of an adult greatly exceeds the passive one. The volumes of words in both dictionaries are prone to constant changes. They are able to increase if a person learns new terms, reads, develops or decreases.

The decrease in the active and passive vocabulary can be due to age, when words are forgotten or when they stop using in communication. In this case, the words will disappear from the person's vocabulary or be replaced with new ones.

Estimating the exact volume of the average person's vocabulary is a difficult task. Nobody knows exactly what it must be in terms of content and number of words. The reference point in this matter is the dictionary of the Russian language by V.I. Dahl, which contains about two hundred thousand words and explanatory dictionary Ozhegova, 70 thousand Russian words.

Of course, it is clear that such a volume of words is beyond the power of even the most intelligent person. Human memory is not able to accommodate such an amount of information without harm to health.

An interesting study was recently conducted to determine the volume of words among native speakers of Russian. It was carried out in the form of testing, where those who wished to mark in the provided list the words they understood and used. Words were noted only if the definition was fully understood.

To improve the quality of testing and sort out inaccurate information, nonexistent designations were present in the lists. The presence in the subject's questionnaire of at least one word from nonexistent and marked as familiar to him was considered unreliable information and was not taken into account.

In the course of the work carried out, the following data were obtained:

• A person's passive vocabulary increases every year up to the age of 20. Further, the rate of development decreases, gradually disappearing after 40 years. At this age and until the end of life, a person's vocabulary remains unchanged.
• Studying at school adds up to 10 words to the passive vocabulary for children every day. The active and passive vocabulary of the student is constantly growing.
• By the end of their studies, adolescents have an average of 50 thousand words.
• School time increases the growth of the volume of words by almost 3 times.
• After leaving school, a person's passive vocabulary stops growing and averages 3-4 words daily.
• At the age of 55, vocabulary continues to decline, due to irreversible memory impairment and the use of some words in practice.

The study assessed the level of education of the subjects, having received interesting conclusions. It turns out that the possession of the largest volume of words in people occurs at different moments of life. Secondary special education implies the end of the growth of words at the age of 40, and higher education a little later - after 50 years. Such a gap of 10 years is explained by the discrepancy between the work performed and the position held by people with different education. At the age of 50, some people read scientific books and gain new knowledge due to the specifics of their work or of their own free will for self-education.

Was also identified interesting fact, which showed that the subjects who completed their studies in educational institution and those who did not complete it for personal reasons, have the same passive vocabulary.

The vocabulary of adults with at different levels education:

• The passive vocabulary has the same indicators for people with secondary education and vocational secondary. It varies between 70-75 thousand words.
• People who received higher education, or those who have not graduated from the institute have in their luggage a reserve of 80 thousand words.
• Educated people, candidates of science have a rich vocabulary of 86 thousand words, which is 6 thousand more than those who received higher education.

The education received, of course, affects a person's vocabulary, but not 100%. A huge contribution to the development of the vocabulary is made by the person himself, constantly improving himself and engaging in self-education. Therefore, it is easy to meet a person who graduated only from school with several times more vocabulary than those who received a higher education. The main role in this issue is played by sociability, occupation and lifestyle of a person.

The conducted research does not give a complete picture of the vocabulary of the average Russian person, as it contains small errors. But despite this, it helps to determine the relationship between vocabulary and age and educational level.

How to expand your vocabulary

There are no universal ways to increase words in the vocabulary of the native language. Each person chooses what is suitable only for him. To improve vocabulary, several methods developed by polyglots for learning will help foreign language.

To increase your passive vocabulary:

• Reading literature.

The more and more often a person reads books, the richer and more interesting his speech sounds. It is pleasant to communicate and spend time with well-read people. This is a versatile way to enrich your vocabulary. The quality of the selected literature is not the least important. It is better to give preference in choice to popular science books, classical literature, avoiding modern "soap" novels or detective stories in them, it is definitely not possible to find new words in the correct application.

• Be interested in the meaning of incomprehensible words.

Always be interested in the meaning of incomprehensible words or new terms from the interlocutor, do not let them go deaf ears. In the course of communication, it is much easier to assimilate new information and can quickly be restored, if necessary, in memory. If new interesting word sounded from the announcers on the radio, then its meaning can be spied in a special dictionary.

• Dictionaries.

Every literate person should have a set of dictionaries at home, which must be used periodically. This is the explanatory dictionary of V. I. Dahl, Ozhegov, as well as the Dictionary of Stress for Radio and Television Workers. It will help to restore the gaps in the stress setting and contains many interesting words.

The Dictionary of Stress for Radio and Television Workers has been published since 1960. Its authors are M.V. Zarva and F.L. Ageenko. The history of creating a dictionary of stresses for radio and television workers began with the release in 1951 of an announcer's reference book, and after 3 years the Dictionary of Stress. To help the announcer. "

All dictionaries for radio and television workers are based on the stocks of "heavy" words accumulated in the card index during the formation of the first radio in the USSR era. The radio and television files were constantly replenished. Many words never entered the dictionaries. The Radio and Television Dictionary contains the names of place names, the names of works of art, the surnames and names of people.

How to expand your active vocabulary

To increase the vocabulary, you need a person's ability to translate words from a passive vocabulary into an active one. The following methods will help with this:

• Notes.

Write down new words along with meaning on pieces of paper and paste them around the house in those places where they will most often be conspicuous. This method will help you memorize information more efficiently and faster without memorizing.

• Associative row.

To memorize a word, build a suitable association for it. It can be directed to the sense of smell, taste, motor, tactile characteristics, or tied to the color scheme. The result depends on the imagination of the person, and the desire to consolidate the information received. The associative array helps you remember difficult words and makes it easier to remember at the right time.

There are also vocabulary exercises. One of the most effective is the oral history writing exercise. To do this, you need to try to tell a small story using only nouns, then only verbs or adjectives. This is not an easy exercise. It helps to use the existing vocabulary, while refreshing them in the person's memory.

The richest and most beautiful Russian language enables people who speak it to express themselves in a variety of ways. The accuracy of the wording and beautiful speech depend on the vocabulary that a person owns. The more words he uses, the more intellectually developed he is considered. Therefore, it becomes important to increase the number of words used.

Scientifically, the vocabulary is called lexicon, meaning words familiar to an individual, a group, or included in the language. It is conventionally subdivided into;

• Active. The first group includes words used every day. They are included in both written and oral speech. A sign of an active vocabulary is free use that does not require additional effort.
• Passive. Passive words include understandable words found in various sources, but not used in speech, or used, but extremely rarely. They are used when necessary, but it takes effort to remember.
• External. External vocabulary denotes unknown words related to specific areas of knowledge. These are professional terms, neologisms and so on. It is hardly possible to make clear boundaries between these groups. They are rather wobbly and sway to one side or the other. As we grow up and mentally develop, the vocabulary grows.

So, if a child going to the first grade speaks two thousand words, then in the latter this number already grows five thousand. For those who study and develop further, the vocabulary reaches 10,000 words or more. Then most of them belong to the passive stock.

Erudite people sometimes even speak 50,000 words. But, only a small part is used daily in communication. The rest of the lexicon is used only with intellectuals like it.

Vocabulary exercises

The following exercises are done in writing or orally.

• Nouns. Tell a little story using only nouns. "Day. Work. End. Output. Door. Key. Entrance. A car. Key. Ignition "and so on.
• Verbs. The same thing that was told using nouns is repeated, only with verbs.
• Adjectives and adverbs. Then comes the turn of other parts of speech.
• Alphabet. Come up with related words that start sequentially with letters of the alphabet in order. “Alena talks in the evening, walking to the cherished ate, gesticulating and eloquently nurturing cute tender dandelions. Pasha follows beside him, dragging a comfortable chrome-plated lantern, often catching a brisk chirping in an extravagant humorous language.
• Monophone. They come up with their own speech, the words of which begin with one letter. Each of them is connected with each other, even if the meaning suffers.

Each of the exercises is difficult to complete. But the words gradually move from a passive vocabulary to an active one, and it is replenished.

Techniques for expanding the vocabulary without extra time

Vocabulary development is, in fact, necessary to voice your thoughts, intentions, analysis and conclusions. This skill is reinforced by practice and weakened in the absence of it. Therefore, in order to develop your speech, you should constantly communicate. The growth of vocabulary is ensured: when learning new words that we hear from interlocutors; precise definitions when words are translated from a passive lexicon into an active one.

• Therefore, it is desirable to communicate with dissimilar people. These are friends, neighbors, classmates, comrades in the gym. People meeting on the Internet on forums and pages social networks, fellow travelers and salespeople also serve as an opportunity for communication and as a way to expand your speech.
• Another effective way to expand your vocabulary, which does not require special time, is listening to audio books. This is important when you have to spend a lot of time on the road, driving your car, ideal for audiences (for people who better perceive information by ear). A variety of books are sold in this format: novels, aphorisms, and philosophical teachings. Having recorded on a flash drive, you can now not get bored in traffic, but listen to a fascinating story. It is convenient to listen to audio books before going to bed.

Expanding vocabulary with time allotment

The following activities will help you build up your vocabulary.

• Reading. Reading is the richest source of information. Books, newspapers, Internet publications, magazines - there are inexhaustible reserves of vocabulary replenishment everywhere. It is advisable to allocate an hour a day for this exciting activity. Sometimes it is good to say words out loud.
• Studying of foreign language. Do not limit your vocabulary to knowledge of one Russian language. Others are useful to study as well. The more a person enriches his speech, the better connections are made, and the easier it is to recall words from memory.
• Games. There are interesting fascinating linguistic games: charades, puzzles and the like. When they are guessed, they are involuntarily interested in words and meaning.
• Diary. Another useful activity is keeping a journal. When it is impossible to attend foreign language courses, they write for themselves. This is a good way to improve vocabulary, as while taking notes, thoughts are formulated that are in the emotional and motivating realms.
• Memorization. Memorization makes it possible to introduce new words into active vocabulary. For this, there is a way of retelling what was heard, memorizing verses and definitions. It is one of the most effective techniques for assimilating new knowledge.

For this it is important:

• incorporate new words into speech every day;
• use a notebook, entering intricate statements, words, phrases with clever expressions there;
• study the essence of new words, adding a visualization technique;
• memorize poems, quotes, sayings and more.

Improving vocabulary requires deliberate action. To achieve beautiful speech requires constant training. Ignoring new words will not give them a chance to get into active or passive vocabulary. It turns out that those who want to expand their vocabulary and enrich their language should make regular volitional efforts for this.

Vocabulary is a collection of all words that a person owns. It is generally accepted that a wide vocabulary is inherent in the most educated people, as well as writers.

Active and passive vocabulary

Active vocabulary is the words that a person uses when speaking or writing. Have different people this figure can vary greatly. All the words of the language are not known or used by anyone.

The active vocabulary of an elementary school student is approximately two thousand words, by the end of the institute this indicator increases at least fivefold! The "Dictionary of Pushkin's Language", which includes all the words used by the great poet in his works, contains about 20 thousand words.

Passive vocabulary is those words that a person does not use himself, but understands if he sees or hears them. As a rule, there are many times more of them than words included in the active vocabulary. This includes various terms, words of limited use (jargon, archaisms or neologisms), just quite rare and unusual words.

It's funny that, with the vocabulary of the Russian language about half a million words, not more than 6 thousand are actively used by all of us, which is about 90% of a person's speech, and only 10% are rarely used.

The concept of active and passive vocabulary is used in linguistics and literary studies, as well as in educational and clinical psychology. Educators also use it. At school, they teach that vocabulary needs to be replenished, and for this you need to read more. This is true. Reading - The best way replenish your passive lexical baggage. Moreover, the most pleasant, because a person follows the twists and turns of the plot, while the words are memorized by themselves. But not every book is suitable for this. Gotta take good literature, you can classics, otherwise there is a risk of running into an author who has the lowest vocabulary: there is nothing to learn from him, you can teach him himself!

Another way is to look up unfamiliar words in a dictionary. In principle, it is not necessary to rush through Ozhegov's dictionary in search of the right word - there are corresponding resources on the Internet that are very convenient to use. But, although you will find out the meaning of the word in any case, you are more likely to remember it when you use a paper dictionary. The search itself, which will take more effort and time, will more firmly fix the word in, because it will be constantly repeated mentally while the person is in search.