BLOG #191   Friday, Dec. 11, 2020 100 Most Common English Words– And What to Do With Them- Yay

    In this blog you will find a list of the 100 Most Common English words.  Studies that estimate and rank these look at written texts. This list comes from the Oxford English Corpus (OEC) from 2 billion words ranging from literary works, novels, academic journals, newspapers, journals, blogs, chat logs, emails and even Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates 2013.  Another corpus which found similar results is from 1967 and is called the Brown Corpus, from Brown University, USA. Their findings were similar.

    Yay for 100 most frequently written English words.  But there’s more reason for you to read through these words both silently and aloud. (More  later about the tip to read this list aloud. And HOW to do that for best short term and long term pronunciation learning results.)  According to the Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists, the first 25 words in the OEC account for about one-third of all printed material in English. AND according to a study cited by Robert McCrum in The Story of English,  all of these hundred words are of Anglo-Saxon origin, except for “people”, which ultimately came from the Latin “populus” and “because” which developed from Latin “causa.”

1. the
2. be (all forms, is, was)
3. to
4. of
5. and
6. a
7. in
8. that
9. have
10. I
11. it
12. for
13. not
14. on
15. with
16. he
17. as
18. you
19. do
20. at
21. this
22. but
23. his
24. by
25. from
26. they
27. we
28. say
29. her
30. she
31. or
32. an
33. will
34. my
35. one
36. all
37. would
38. there
39. their
40. what
41. so
42. up
43. out
44. if
45. about
46. who
47. get
48. which
49. go
50. me
51. when
52. make
53. can
54. like
55. time
56. no
57. just
58. him
59. know
60. take
61. people
62. into
63. year
64. your
65. good
66. some
67. could
68. them
69. see
70. other
71. than
72. then
73.  now
74. look
75. only
76. come
77. its
78. over
79. think
80. also
81. back
82. after
83. use
84. two
85. how
86. our
87. work
88. first
89. well
90. way
91. even
92. new
93. want
94. because
95. any
96. these
97. give
98. day
99. most 100. us

Congratulations, you got all the way to the bottom of this list of the 100 most frequently written words, Now—do consider reading this list of words aloud for practice in making your English speech more understandable to everybody and , if you want it– sound more like native-born North Americans.

Here’s an important hint. Based on our –Clear Talk Mastery’s– experience with one-on-one coaching of student-learners who are taking the format Gold, Gold Plus or Platinum,  the student-learners who used work-out mode practice for their homework/ direct practice did the best.  Hands down. 

Here’s a quck description of work-out mode practice—For fastest and long lasting results, including growing speech muscles,  when you practice some or all of these words do this:

1. Pronounce each sound carefully and accurately
2. Consciously make your speech muscles stiff and hard. Lips, tongue, even jaw muscles.
3.  Consciously exaggerate the movement of your muscles—make slow muscles go at least double slow and fast muscles at least double fast.  Thus slow sounds like “th” make these very very slow.  And exaggerate the accuracy or placement of muscles. For example, for the “th” sound, push your tongue outside of your mouth and make the tip of your tongue go down toward your chin.   That will make that muscle grow in strength because you have loaded it.
4. Importantly, make the muscles attached to the vocal folds stiffer and harder than you typically do.  You will know you have succeeded because the speech sound is louder. -30-