THE BAD NEWS

Dealing with new vocabulary is one of the biggest problems you face as a a non-native English speaker.

Unfortunately for you, English has more words than any other language in human history.

German has the second most words, but even that’s way behind with only around 50% as many words as English.

English contains at least 750,000 words. Nobody knows the exact amount, but the total might be close to 1,000,000 words!

Writing down a list of new words you learn is a great idea, but it’s not enough because you’ll soon get frustrated when the list gets too big and you struggle to keep up.

The truth is that it’s not realistic to attempt to remember all these words. Even native speakers aren’t capable of knowing 1,000,000 words.

THE GOOD NEWS

Luckily you don’t need to learn all 1,000,000 words

Experts claim that 50% of all spoken English is made up of only the 100 most frequent words.

It’s very easy to recognize 100 words of a language, so if you can study hard and learn around 1,000 of the most important words.

Even just three new words a day will get you there! With just 1,000 words, you’ll recognize most of the words that people actually use in day to day spoken English.

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Not All Words Are Equal

The first step is prioritizing which words to learn and which words you should make no extra effort to remember.

Some words are far more important than others, so you need to know what vocabulary to practice based on actual frequency of use (the 20% vital few vs. the 80% trivial many).

To do this, you’ll need to ask your teacher to do a Vocabulary Pareto Analysis for you.

WHAT IS A PARETO ANALYSIS?

A Pareto Analysis is a statistical technique used to discover what small number of tasks produce produce most of the overall effect.

The Pareto Principle (also known as the 80/20 rule) is the idea that by doing 20% of the work you can generate 80% of the benefit of doing the entire job.

In terms of quality improvement, a large majority of problems (80%) are produced by a few key causes (20%).

This is also known as the vital few (20%) and the trivial many (80%).

*80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients

*80% of wealth belongs to 20% of the population

* 80% of your stress comes from 20% of the people you know

In your case, a large majority (80%) of spoken English is produced by only a few (20%) vital words (20%).

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HOW TO DO A PARETO ANALYSIS

Type the word into Google and see how frequently it occurs in English by checking the number of results the search returned. The higher the number, the more frequent the word is and the more priority you should give it in your studies.

You can refine this search if needed. Instead of just typing the new word in Google, try typing it next to “business” or “finance” or whatever is an important keyword in your industry or university course.

1) The idea is to rank this list of words in a spreadsheet. The words with the biggest Google search number will be at the top of your list.

2) Count the total number of search results for all the words combined

3) Divide each word’s frequency number by the total number of search results.

4) Highlight the words which account for 80% of the total number of search results

5) You should notice that only around 20% of your total new words account for 80% of the total frequency. I call these “A Words“.

A Words are what you should focus on learning. Don’t worry about less important words further down the list (I call these “Z Words” and tell my students not to waste time stressing about them).

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HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR VOCABULARY WITH YOUR 80/20 PARETO LIST

When your teacher gives you your list of A words, make sure you print it out and pin it on your wall or keep it a bag that you carry around.

Another good idea is to write the words down on index cards. When you’re waiting for something or have a few minutes with nothing to do, take a quick look at your A Words.

From then on, whenever you find a new word that you don’t understand, type it into Google and find out how frequent it is. Add it into your 80/20 Pareto List, and if it qualifies as an “A Word” make sure you spend some time practicing it with your teacher.

You get a much higher return on your time investment by studying only these A words.

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Lee Banfield is the founder of Finance Business English. If you’re interested in learning more or studying Business English with Lee please add him on

Skype: Skype ID = financebusinessenglish

For more tips and advice, I recommend checking out my website where I write a couple of times a week and answer questions from students.

www.financebusinessenglish.com