A General Service List of English Words
Encyclopedia
The General Service List (GSL) is a list of roughly 2000 words published by Michael West
in 1953. The words were selected to represent the most frequent words of English and were taken from a corpus
of written English. The target audience was English language learners and ESL teachers. To maximize the utility of the list, some frequent words that overlapped broadly in meaning with words already on the list were omitted. In the original publication the relative frequencies of various senses of the words were also included.
s, which means that the word "be" is high on the list, but assumes that the person is fluent in all forms of the word, e.g. am, is, are, was, were, being, and been.
Researchers have expressed doubts about the adequacy of the GSL because of its age and the relatively low coverage provided by the words not in the first 1000 words of the list. Engels was, in particular, critical of the limited vocabulary chosen by West 1953, and while he concurred that the first 1000 words of the GSL were good selections based on their high frequency and wide range, he was of the opinion that the words beyond the first 1000 of the GSL could not be considered general service words because the range and frequency of these words were too low to be included in the list. Recent research by Billuroğlu and Neufeld (2005) confirmed that the General Service List was in need of minor revision, but the headwords in the list still provide approximately 80% text coverage in written English. The research showed that the GSL contains a small number of archaic terms, such as shilling, while excluding words that have gained currency since the first half of the twentieth century, such as plastic, television, battery, okay, victim, and drug.
The GSL evolved over several decades before West’s publication in 1953. The GSL is not a list based solely on frequency, but includes groups of words on a semantic basis. Today there is no version of the GSL in print; it only exists in virtual form via the Internet. Various versions float around the Internet, and attempts have been made to improve it.
Michael Philip West
Dr. Michael Philip West was an English language teacher and researcher who worked extensively in India in the mid 1900s. He produced the reading scheme The New Modern Reader and A General Service List of English Words .-References:*...
in 1953. The words were selected to represent the most frequent words of English and were taken from a corpus
Text corpus
In linguistics, a corpus or text corpus is a large and structured set of texts...
of written English. The target audience was English language learners and ESL teachers. To maximize the utility of the list, some frequent words that overlapped broadly in meaning with words already on the list were omitted. In the original publication the relative frequencies of various senses of the words were also included.
Details
The list is important because a person who knows all the words on the list and their related families would understand approximately 90-95 percent of colloquial speech and 80-85 percent of common written texts. The list consists only of headwordHeadword
A headword, head word, lemma, or sometimes catchword is the word under which a set of related dictionary or encyclopaedia entries appear. The headword is used to locate the entry, and dictates its alphabetical position...
s, which means that the word "be" is high on the list, but assumes that the person is fluent in all forms of the word, e.g. am, is, are, was, were, being, and been.
Researchers have expressed doubts about the adequacy of the GSL because of its age and the relatively low coverage provided by the words not in the first 1000 words of the list. Engels was, in particular, critical of the limited vocabulary chosen by West 1953, and while he concurred that the first 1000 words of the GSL were good selections based on their high frequency and wide range, he was of the opinion that the words beyond the first 1000 of the GSL could not be considered general service words because the range and frequency of these words were too low to be included in the list. Recent research by Billuroğlu and Neufeld (2005) confirmed that the General Service List was in need of minor revision, but the headwords in the list still provide approximately 80% text coverage in written English. The research showed that the GSL contains a small number of archaic terms, such as shilling, while excluding words that have gained currency since the first half of the twentieth century, such as plastic, television, battery, okay, victim, and drug.
The GSL evolved over several decades before West’s publication in 1953. The GSL is not a list based solely on frequency, but includes groups of words on a semantic basis. Today there is no version of the GSL in print; it only exists in virtual form via the Internet. Various versions float around the Internet, and attempts have been made to improve it.
See also
- International EnglishInternational EnglishInternational English is the concept of the English language as a global means of communication in numerous dialects, and also the movement towards an international standard for the language...
- GlobishGlobishGlobish may refer to:* Globish , a formalized natural language subset of English grammar and vocabulary* Globish , a simplified constructed language related to, but independent of, standard English...
developed by Jean-Paul Nerrière - Basic EnglishBasic EnglishBasic English, also known as Simple English, is an English-based controlled language created by linguist and philosopher Charles Kay Ogden as an international auxiliary language, and as an aid for teaching English as a Second Language...
developed by Charles Kay Ogden. - Academic word listAcademic word listThe Academic Word List was developed by Averil Coxhead at the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. The list contains 570 semantic fields which were selected because they appear with great frequency in a broad range of academic texts...
developed as an extension to the General Service List by Averil Coxhead - Swadesh listSwadesh listA Swadesh list is one of several lists of vocabulary with basic meanings, developed by Morris Swadesh from 1940 onward, with the final, posthumously published version 1971 [1972], which is used in lexicostatistics and glottochronology .- Versions and authors :There are several versions of Swadesh...
External links
- Bauman's revised GSL A 1995 revised version of the GSL with minor changes, along with a more detailed discussion about the problems in the GSL.
- PC-based vocabulary profiling software that includes the GSL:
- Heatley, Nation, and Coxhead's RANGE and FREQUENCY programs, including the GSL and the AWL as TXT files for vocabulary profiling
- AntWordProfiler, a free open source vocabulary profiler, also including the GSL as a TXT file.
- Lextutor Vocabulary Profilers provided free by Tom Cobb includes several web-based vocabulary profilers, in which you can paste any text and the words are then 'coloured' according to frequency band profiles. Here are two:
- Classic Vocabulary Profiler, which produces output in coloured form—blue for K1 (the first 1,000 words of the GSL), green for K2 (the second 1,000 words of the GSL), yellow for Academic word listAcademic word listThe Academic Word List was developed by Averil Coxhead at the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. The list contains 570 semantic fields which were selected because they appear with great frequency in a broad range of academic texts...
, and red for words that are not in any of the lists - BNL profiler is a revised word list for students learning English which overcomes the problems of treating the GSL and AWL as separate and distinct constructs.
- Classic Vocabulary Profiler, which produces output in coloured form—blue for K1 (the first 1,000 words of the GSL), green for K2 (the second 1,000 words of the GSL), yellow for Academic word list
- Other web-based vocabulary profilers include: