Page-1 (Load of English Song)

Page-2 (Load of English Song)

1991; Zechmeister et.al., 1995). This research has focused on English native speakers and

estimated average vocabulary sizes as being around 20,000 words1. A vocabulary target

of this size still seems too large for a typical language learner in the light of studies of

EFL learners around the world which revealed rather small vocabulary sizes of around

one to two thousand (e.g. Barrow et. al., 1999; Nurweni & Read, 1999; Olmos, 2009). The

other approach has been to measure the vocabulary needed to understand authentic

written and spoken texts (i.e. vocabulary load). While comprehension is best when all

the words in a text are known, it has been shown that adequate comprehension is

possible when known words are less than 100%. Two percentages have been suggested:

98% for optimum comprehension and 95% for minimum comprehension (Laufer &

Ravenhorst-Kalovski, 2010). The percentage of known vocabulary in a text is termed

‘coverage’ and several studies have attempted to identify the size of vocabulary needed

to cover the suggested percentages. This has revealed smaller vocabulary size

requirements for optimal coverage (98%): 8,000-9,000 words for written English texts

and 6,000-7,000 words for spoken texts (Nation, 2006; Webb & Rodgers, 2009a; 2009b).

For 95% coverage, knowledge of the most frequent 3,000 words was found to be

sufficient for both written and spoken texts (ibid).

The few research on spoken texts suggested that different text types require different

vocabulary sizes. Webb & Rodgers (2009a) studied the vocabulary of English TV

programmes and found that a vocabulary size of 7,000 words was needed for 98%

coverage. In another study Webb & Rodgers (2009b) estimated that English movies

required 6,000 words to be known for the same coverage. A study by Staeher (2009)

suggested that a variety of text types in a standardized listening test at the C2 level of

CEFR required 5,000 words. Informal conversation, on the other hand, required only

around 2,000 words (Adolps & Schmitt, 2003 ). Webb & Paribakht (2015) also found

large variation among 37 listening passages in an English proficiency test used in

Canada. The vocabulary size for 98% coverage ranged between 4,000 and beyond 14,000

words. For 95% coverage, it ranged between 2,000 and beyond 14,000. Webb & Rodgers