Although there are more than 600,000 words in the English language, only a small number of these appear frequently in the materials we read. In fact, studies have shown that there are only 13 different words that make up 25 percent of the words we read, and there are 100 words that make up 50 percent of the words we read. These words are called high-frequency words.
There are several reasons why students should be explicitly taught high-frequency words.
- One is that many of these words, such as the, is, to and are, do not follow commonly taught phonics rules and cannot be sounded out. The only way a child can read these words is to recognize them by sight.
- A second reason is that knowing the most commonly used words by sight will make a student a faster and more fluent reader. Students who need to pause and attempt to figure out most of the words they read tends to overload their memory. As a result, their understanding of what is read suffers.
- A third reason for teaching high-frequency words is that while many of these words alone don’t carry much meaning, they do affect the meaning of a sentence and help make it understandable.
To get a list of the first 100 high frequency words, please click here.
For the next 200 high frequency words, please click here.
For more information on how to teach the high frequency words, please click here where this quote comes from.