Active and Passive Vocabulary

[Harry Smith]

Reading helps to enlarge someone's vocabulary a lot. The last book I read gave me 123 new words. I'm very happy to store them in my active vocabulary.

[SSteffin]

You are looking at a complicated, question, but one which research can answer. In seeking an answer, some ambiguities in the way you framed your question need to be addressed:

• The Term "should" implies that there have been some currently determined standards against which a given speaker can be compared.
• What is an "Average Endlish (sic) speaker?" Is he/she an adult? Is English the speaker's native language. What about the level of educational attainment of this speaker? What social, occupational, or environmental factors determine the vocabularly used by this speaker.
• You need to define what you mean by the term "Active Vocabulary."
• What does it mean to "...know in general?" Does this refer to recognition of a word, being able to use it in a sentence, being able to provide a formal definition?

There are some other issues in your question that are not readily apparent:

• I wonder why you have selected spoken English, rather than written. Variability of usage frequency is so much dependent on the context of the communicaton wth respect to both speaker and audience, that you would have to record all words used by a representative random sample of speakers having the attributes described above, within a variety of audience contexts, to determine the frequency of usage for any given word.
• You would be far better off looking at word frequencies as used in school text books at grade levles 1-12, to get a feel for the most commonly used words at those grade levles.

To get some assistance in pursuing your question, you may want to look at this site: Companion Website for: Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English

[Harry Smith]

Ten days ago was the last day of school and my pupils had no books and exercise-books with them. At first I didn't know what to do. Suddenly an idea came to my mind. I wrote all the letters of the \English Alphabet on the blackboard and told them to write all the words they know beginning with the letters of the alphabet.I told them these words are their active vocabulary. You know the result was better than I expected. Two of my students wrote 500 words with the first six letters (A,B,C,D,E,F). The others did well too. They promised to finish it at home. I was so happy to see their enthusiasm.I am sure many of them will write more than 1000 words.We mustn't forget that they have only two English lessons a week.

[blouen]

Originally Posted by Harry Smith

Reading helps to enlarge someone's vocabulary a lot. The last book I read gave me 123 new words. I'm very happy to store them in my active vocabulary.

Yes, I agree! I read a lot of books and never miss a day without reading anything... I mark difficult words in my book and look them up in my dictionary for the meaning. The only problem is I can't put those words in practice for they are a bit advance for conversations.

Do I need to record those words not to forget them?

[Harry Smith]

Originally Posted by blouen

Yes, I agree! I read a lot of books and never miss a day without reading anything... I mark difficult words in my book and look them up in my dictionary for the meaning. The only problem is I can't put those words in practice for they are a bit advance for conversations.

Do I need to record those words not to forget them?

You can write them on a piece of paper and have a look at them several times during the day. In this way you'll better remember them. Don't forget to use these words in different sentences of your own. It helps a lot too.

[blouen]

Okay, thanks! I'll do it!!!

[Harry Smith]

Originally Posted by blouen

Okay, thanks! I'll do it!!!

You are most welcome!
If you want to know how many active words do you remember try this game. You choose a long word, let's take

Celebration
and with the letters of this word make up new words, for example:
table,late, rate, cite, nice, rat, bat, ton, note, it, at, lion, real, brain etc.
I hope you'll like it. It's a good exercise for learning English.

[blouen]

Originally Posted by Harry Smith

You are most welcome!
If you want to know how many active words do you remember try this game. You choose a long word, let's take

Celebration
and with the letters of this word make up new words, for example:
table,late, rate, cite, nice, rat, bat, ton, note, it, at, lion, real, brain etc.
I hope you'll like it. It's a good exercise for learning English.

Okay, I'll try it when I have time later.... let's see what words I can come up with...

[RonBee]

Originally Posted by Harry Smith

You are most welcome!
If you want to know how many active words do you remember try this game. You choose a long word, let's take

Celebration
and with the letters of this word make up new words, for example:
table,late, rate, cite, nice, rat, bat, ton, note, it, at, lion, real, brain etc.
I hope you'll like it. It's a good exercise for learning English.

actor
action
berate
bract
brace
create
creation
elation
clean
cleaner
clear
trace
train
trainer
iron
ration
robin
relic