English Vocabulary Lists — A1 to C1

How many English words do you actually need?

Vocabulary coverage depends on the corpus, whether proper nouns are counted and what “knowing” a word means. In a widely cited corpus study, Paul Nation estimated that about 8,000 to 9,000 word families are needed for 98% coverage of written text, and about 6,000 to 7,000 for spoken text. These are comprehension estimates, not official CEFR thresholds. The practical lesson is to learn high-frequency vocabulary first and measure progress in the kinds of text and speech you actually use.

What each CEFR level gives you

• A1 — Beginner

  Around 500–1,000 word families. Enough to introduce yourself, describe your home and family, order food and handle a simple transaction. The 300 words in the A1 list are the highest-frequency core of that band.

  300 words · 15 everyday topics

• A2 — Elementary

  Around 1,000–2,000 families. You can deal with routine situations, describe your background and immediate environment, and say how you feel with some precision rather than reaching for good and bad.

  600 words · 20 topics

• B1 — Intermediate

  Around 2,000–3,200 families, the point at which you cover roughly 95% of everyday conversation. You can explain opinions, give reasons, and hold a discussion on a familiar subject without avoiding the difficult parts.

  1,000 words · 25 topics

• B2 — Upper-Intermediate

  Often estimated in the low thousands of word families, depending on the test and counting method. This supports broad reading, but it should not be described as 98% newspaper coverage; corpus estimates put that threshold much higher.

  1,500 words · 30 topics

• C1 — Advanced

  Around 5,000–8,000 families. Nearly everything in general use is now familiar; what is left is nuance, idiom and register — choosing the better word rather than finding a correct one.

  2,100 words · 35 topics

How to learn vocabulary so it stays learned

Six habits that separate the learners who keep their words from the learners who relearn them. None of them takes long; all of them are supported by decades of research on how memory actually works.

• Meet each word several times, briefly

  A word enters long-term memory through repeated short encounters rather than one long study session. Most learners need to meet a new word somewhere between eight and a dozen times before it is genuinely theirs, which is an argument for short daily sessions and against weekend marathons.

• Space the reviews out

  Spacing review across multiple sessions generally improves delayed retention compared with massed practice. The best interval varies with the material and retention goal; the flashcard trainer uses a practical schedule rather than claiming one universal sequence.

• Retrieve, do not re-read

  Looking at a word and its meaning together feels productive and does very little. Covering the answer and forcing yourself to produce it — even failing to — is what builds the pathway you need when speaking. Difficulty during practice is the point, not a problem.

• Store the phrase, not the word

  English will not let you do a mistake or make homework, and knowing the definitions of those words will never tell you so. Record every new item with the word that naturally sits beside it: make a decision, heavy traffic, catch a cold.

• Read at the right difficulty

  For a word to be guessable from context you need to know roughly 98% of the other words on the page. If you are looking up more than one word in fifty, the text is too hard to learn from — drop a level and read considerably more of it.

• Use it within a day

  Write one sentence with each new word that is actually true about you, or say it aloud in answer to a real question. Words attached to something personal survive; words attached to a translation pair fade. This step takes seconds and does more than another round of review.

Questions learners ask about building vocabulary