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Though I’m not sure whether this question is suitable to EL&U site or not, I’m glad if I can get any input on the relationship of the vocabulary and comprehension of English language, or if you can suggest me other suitable site that I can post this question.

I recently read the book, titled “Read a Million Words (to master English language),” written by Japanese English language scholar at Tokyo Tele-communication University, Kunihide Sakai.

Mr.Sakai cites the following numbers:

  • Vocabulary of 1,000 words allows 80% comprehension of English statement

  • 2,000-word vocabulary allows 86.6 % comprehension of English statement

  • 3,000-word vocabulary allows 90.6 % comprehension of English statement

  • 4,000-word vocabularies allows 92.8 % comprehension of English statement

Though it’s not clear what "English statement" means (maybe I’d do better to ask him directly as well as about the source of number), it’s hardly believable that 3,000 vocabulary level allows 90% comprehension of general statement in English language from my experience of reading English language literatures everyday to look for the subject for posting EL&U.

I know British psychologist and linguist, Charles K. Ogden asserted that we can express everything we want to say with 1,500 words (850 basic English words and their combinations, plus 350 international (foreign) words and 300 from scientific terminology), and promoted Basic English movement during 1930s.

Winston Churchill supported Ogden’s theory and recommended diffusion of Basic English as the international language in his discourse at Harvard University in 1944. However, Ogden's theory is applied only to writing and speaking, not reading and hearing.

Is there any trustworthy study that illuminates the relationship between vocabulary level and ability to comprehend English language statements expressed in day-to-day conversation, literature (not too academic) and daily journals? What is its finding with regards to the relationship between vocabulary and comprehension?

Community
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Yoichi Oishi
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  • I think this is a bit not constructive for the main site because you're asking for a list. However, pop on in to chat--I'm sure people have read studies of this sort and could point you in the right direction. –  Dec 05 '12 at 01:19
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    The question only needed the barest editing to make it more objective, which I have done. I think this is an interesting and answerable question and deserves to be reopened. – JSBձոգչ Dec 05 '12 at 04:00
  • Please could you be more specific about how Mr Sakai defines vocabulary? Claims like these often turn out to be disingenuous because they ignore phrasal verbs. For example, "sound" and "out" are in the top 100 most commonly used words in English, but the phrasal verb "sound out" certainly isn't! – Pitarou Dec 05 '12 at 10:27
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    Any such enterprise is fraught with difficulty. What is a word? What is comprehension? These have to be very tightly defined for any results to make any sense. – Barrie England Dec 05 '12 at 10:39
  • @Pitarou. I’m glad to find you are living in Narita, neighborhood to my town – Kashiwa. I picked up the number from the book titled “回読百万語-Speed reading a million times” written by 酒井邦秀published by Chikuma-Shobo. I jotted down the number while I stood reading the book at the bookstore, but I didn’t buy the book. – Yoichi Oishi Dec 05 '12 at 22:48
  • It may be a good idea to post a link to this question on (meta.)academiaSE where it could be seen by those in research. – Kris Dec 06 '12 at 06:18
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    @Yoichi: I hate having to vote Not Constructive on any of your questions, because they're always interesting! I doubt I can really add much to jwpat7's comprehensive answer, but I would just say I think if two people both had perfect knowledge of the same* 4000-word vocabulary* (or even considerably less), they could in principle achieve 100% for both "expression" and "comprehension". They might sometimes have to use more words to express certain concepts, is all. – FumbleFingers Dec 07 '12 at 22:33
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    Oishi-san, I think this is like those books that tell you you can achieve basic literacy in Japanese by knowing only ~1,000 漢字. Even knowing all the characters in the 常用漢字 doesn't make one anything like completely literate. There are many more characters, words, proper names, 熟語, and 外来語　that native speakers know without even thinking about it, which the casual student would find utterly opaque. – Robusto Dec 08 '12 at 01:27
  • @FumbleFingers. Actually this question was once closed by Simchona et al for the reason of being Off-Topic, which I predicted at the beginning of the question, but it was re-opened thanks to the interest of many other peers who casted 7 up-votes to this question. My intent was simple, to find input / data to counter-argue the significance of the numbers given by Professor Sakai, which I thought dubious. Although I got only one answer from jwtpat7 who game me concrete numbers and a scrupulous interpretation, I’m quite satisfied with his answer. – Yoichi Oishi Dec 09 '12 at 00:41
  • Cont.I now understand that the attempt to measure comprehension of a language by vocabulary level is almost fruitless, or not too much rewarding, therefore rarely having been made. – Yoichi Oishi Dec 09 '12 at 00:41
  • @Yoichi: Well, be honest - can you remember a time when vocabulary gaps in your native tongue meaningfully limited your ability to comprehend texts? I expect since you were a teenager almost all "unfamiliar" words were either reasonably accessible through context, or were new and difficult because they represented concepts/referents you weren't familiar with (so you had much more than just the words to learn). I don't know the size of your English vocabulary, but for all practical purposes it gives you a 99.999% "comprehension rating" (and you cover the odd 0.001% here anyway! :) – FumbleFingers Dec 09 '12 at 03:21

1 Answers1

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A person who has a large vocabulary does not necessarily comprehend a higher fraction of all statements than a person with a small vocabulary; that is to say, some people with small vocabularies may understand what people tell them or what they read more quickly and thoroughly than other people with large vocabularies. But it is reasonable to suppose that on the average, and as a general rule, larger vocabulary leads to better understanding.

The trend expressed in the quoted statistics is of plausible form: the first thousand words counting for most understanding, with successively lower return from each increment thereafter.

As to whether a 3000-word vocabulary level typically allows 90% comprehension of general statements in the English language (where, as noted in comments, word and comprehension are nebulous concepts), I find the statistic both plausible and implausible, believable and unbelievable. In favor of the statistic, the vocabularies of typical American English speakers that I encounter seem quite limited; toss out any word not among the top few thousand words and they don't know the meaning of it. Strongly weighing against the statistic are webpages as at testyourvocab.com which shows about 3300 words in the vocabulary of the average 3-year-old, and 20000 to 32000 words in the vocabulary of average people older than 15. A straightdope.com page quotes Stephen Pinker as suggesting the average American high-school graduate knows about 60000 words. In his book The Language Instinct, Pinker says the 45000-word average vocabulary suggested by other researchers rather underestimates vocabulary size.

To recapitulate: (1) vocabulary size is not necessarily a good predictor of language comprehension; (2) nothing in this answer either establishes or disproves any of the statistics mentioned in the question; and (3) I think the terminology in the question is not precise enough to allow definitive answers.

James Waldby - jwpat7
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    +1 Very well explained points. There could have been some reference to any actual studies, with citations. The discussion in the answer mainly concerns with people's vocabulary strength and not vocabulary application. This is an important distinction. OP's question relates to the vocabulary required to correctly understand the average statement. The references in your answer, on the other hand, relate to how many words a person knows. They are different concepts. It is known that in regular reading, a person rarely ever uses some (like 20-30 per cent?) of the words he knows. – Kris Dec 06 '12 at 06:14
  • @Kris, I agree with most of the points in your comment and agree the distinction is important. Note, I don't know if “vocabulary required to correctly understand the average statement” can be determined; what can be measured (or estimated) are vocabulary size of participant and participant's level of understanding. I didn't find much about levels of understanding. – James Waldby - jwpat7 Dec 06 '12 at 06:24