Top 2000 English Words You Need to Know – The General Service List

The General Service List (GSL) is a list of 2000-2284 words that are most frequently used in English.  These words cover between 85%-95% of all written and spoken English.  It is very important that you know these words.   It is an excellent first word list for beginning learners for optimal vocabulary growth. If you are already an intermediate or advanced English learner, you should check to make sure you know all these words.

Growth is a word on the GSL.

This General Service List web page conveniently displays all the GSL headwords on one page, numbered and ordered from most frequent to less frequent. The headword is the main, often shortest root form of a word in a word family.  For example, one headword is nation.  The word family includes national, nationalize, and nationality.  By knowing the meaning of the headword, it will be easier to understand the meaning of all the words in the word family.This GSL wiktionary page groups the vocabulary in sets of 200 words, ordered by frequency.  Each word is then linked to a wiktionary (dictionary) entry, that includes an .ogg file pronunciation audio clip, a definition, one or more example sentences, plural forms for nouns, tense and participle forms for verbs, and more useful information.

This Centre for Independent Language Learning page has a long list of the words, ordered by frequency.  Next to each word is a link to a web page to view a definition, example sentences, a pronunciation audio file, and a Chinese translation of the word.

This .PDF page lists the first 1000 words alphabetically in five columns, then this  .PDF page lists the next 2000 in alphabetical order, also in five columns.  This Michigan’s Adult Literacy Project .PDF file is 23 pages long, and lists the first 1000 words alphabetically into four columns and then the second 2000 words in the same way.

This set of pdf files show the first, second and third 250 most frequently used words from the GSL.  The next sets of 250 words do not appear to have been posted by this resource provider. However, in addition to providing the part of speech and a definition of each word, it lists Spanish equivalents of the words, so I’ve included this partial list here anyway.

To help make your learning easier, I have sorted the headwords of the General Service List according to parts of speech.  I have put the nouns together in one table, then verbs in another table, then adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, and other words into tables or columns.  Some headwords may be frequently used as more than one part of speech.  Such words are listed in each applicable part of speech table or column, with their multiple parts of speech marked as well.

My lists make it easier to see which words you need to learn the plurals for (the nouns) and which words you need to learn how to conjugate (the verbs).  When you are creating sentences and you know the part of speech you want, but cannot think of the exact word, it is easier to find it using my lists.  For example,  if you need a verb that means “to go down in water,” you can look through the words in the verb table and see the word you want is “sink.”

You can test your knowledge of the meaning of these words with these excellent quizzes.  These quizzes are useful for intermediate and advanced learners. (They are probably too difficult for beginners.)

Do you know all the words in the General Service List?  Do you find any of the links above useful for your English language learning?  Do you know of other General Service List web pages links that show translations of the words in other languages?  Please share with us your learning experiences and resources!

Growth image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net