Power of Words | Charles Browne | TEDxTokyoTeachers

In this talk, Charles Browne addresses the perennial problem of how English vocabulary is taught in Japan and introduces a concrete solution in the form of a corpus-derived list of high-frequency words called the New General Service List (published by Browne, Culligan and Phillips in 2013). These 2800 words represent less than 0.4% of the English language yet cover 92% of the words students will likely meet in their daily lives. After explaining the background behind this important list of words, Dr. Browne will then introduce a large and growing suite of free online tools he has developed to help learners, teachers, researchers and content developers to be able to better utilize these words.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Thanks, Patrick.

Well, yes, it's true.

My name is Charlie Brown.

(Laughter) (Applause)

Well, right now, I am working here
in Tokyo, Japan at Meiji Gakuin University

as a professor of applied linguistics.

And I've actually been in Japan,
working in education,

for about close to 30 years now.

My area of focus

is second language vocabulary acquisition

and also eLearning.

Tonight I just want to have a few words
with all of you about a few words of mine.

Basically, what I've done is I've created
a word list, actually several word lists,

that I think are very foundational,
important core words

for second language learners.

But before I get to talking
about that list of words,

I think it's probably better
to just begin at the beginning

and talk a little bit
about the size and scope

of the English language.

I'm not sure if you ever thought
about this or you ever looked it up,

but in the largest dictionary of English,
which is the Oxford English Dictionary,

there is more than 600,000
word families in the dictionary.

And word families means
all of the different kinds of a word.

So, accept, accepting, acceptable,
accepts - that's all one word.

So there's actually millions of words
in the English language.

It's an enormous,
almost incomprehensible number.

But fortunately for us,
not all words are created equally.

Fortunately for us, native speakers
on average use far less than 600,000.

If, for example,

you were to measure the vocabulary size
of a native speaker of English

who grew up
in an English-speaking country -

somebody who's gone on
all the way through to college -

by the time they've graduated college

they've mastered somewhere
between 25 and 30 thousand words

of English.

So, in other words,
only about five percent

of the English language.

Now, that's really good -

30,000 is a lot less than 600,000 -

but what about second-language
learners of English?

I'm working here in Japan,

and I'm always worried
about the needs of my students.

And the news is not quite as good here.

If we look at, for example,
Japanese students,

after they've studied English
for a total of 14 years -

two years in elementary school,
three years in junior high,

three in senior high and four in college -

after 14 years of study, they only
know about 2,000 words of English.

That's far less than the 30,000
that native speakers know.

And this is not a problem
that is just only happening in Japan.

Almost all second-language learners
of English all around the world

suffer from the same kind of numbers.

After hundreds of hours of study
and years of study,

they are still not even close
to the level of native speakers.

And this is really one of the things
that sort of worried me and puzzled me

and I've spent a lot of time
trying to figure out.

What I wanted to try and figure out

is if I could find some kind of a shortcut

or shortcuts for second
language learners.

So if native speakers
are here at about 30,000

and non-natives are down
at about one or two thousand,

are there certain words
that are more important than others,

certain words that are more useful,

that if the students knew
a certain list of words less than 30,000,

could they get through most English
books and magazines and things like that?

And the answer is yes.

But how do we figure out those words?

Well, that's the science
of corpus linguistics,

and that's what I do.

Basically, what a corpus is

is a large collection of texts.

And what you see
on the left-hand side of your screen

is a whole bunch of texts
being thrown into a computer.

And the computer basically
helps us to analyze those texts

and to try and figure out
which of the words are more frequent,

which of the words are more important.

And with a little bit of luck, a little
bit of sweat, a little bit of hard work,

we're able to identify
a really nice tight group of words

that really can help students out.

And this is exactly what I
and my colleagues have done

in creating what's called
"The New General Service List,"

or the NGSL.

We used a corpus
of about 273 million words

that's made up of both
spoken English and written English,

that has American English
and British English

and pulled it all together,

and when we analyzed that corpus,

we were able to come up
with a list of just 2,800 words.

And those 2,800 words give actually
a very incredible 90 to 92% coverage

for most books, magazines, newspapers,
anything that students might read,

and actually an even higher coverage

if they try to watch TV
or watch a Hollywood movie.

So these are really, really useful words.

And 2,800 sounds like a lot,

but that's less than 10%
of what a native speaker knows

and less than one percent
of the entire English language.

So once we publish this list -

you know, as a professor
at an Ivory Tower school,

the thing that we're supposed
to do is publish papers -

so one of the first things we did
was started to write research papers.

So if you go to a library
at a university somewhere,

you'll see some of my papers
gathering dust in an ivory tower.

But this is absolutely
not why we did this project.

We did the research to show
that what we did was on the up and up.

But really, our main purpose
was to identify a list of words

that we thought would be useful
for language learners

and then to just work
as hard as we could to get tools

out in the hands of students, teachers,
text writers and researchers

to actually be able to use those words.

So this website that I've created
called "newgeneralservicelist.org."

sort of collects all of those resources.

And if you go to the website,
what you'll see

is just this incredible collection
that's growing every day

of free resources to help you
to take advantage of the list.

Of course, there's downloadable versions
of the various word lists we've made.

There's definitions in easy
English and Japanese

so that learners can
sort of learn the words

without having to deal
with very long definitions.

There's a whole host
of online learning applications,

online assessment tools,
online research tools,

text analysis and grading tools.

And there's a blog
which sort of updates you

on all of the new happenings
with the NGSL.

And what I'd like to do just for the last
two or three minutes of my presentation

is just show you a few screenshots
of some of these resources.

So for example,

there are a few really nice free websites

for flashcard learning of new words.

And two of my favorite
are quizlet.com and memrise.com.

They're really nice,
number one because they're free

and as poor teachers, we love free.

But the nice thing
about Memrise and Quizlet

is you can upload any word list you want

and then you can start learning them
via not only flashcards

but all kinds of different,
really interactive learning activities

and games.

And you'll find the NGSL
on both of those websites.

But most of my students,
rather than using PCs to learn,

they actually prefer
using their smartphones.

So one of the first things I did

was I started to create a series
of free iPhone and Android applications

to help students
to learn those word lists.

And so you can go into one of the stores

and you can probably find
a NGSL builder in either store now.

But also, we needed to create tools

to help researchers and people
who are writing or analyzing text.

And one of my favorite text analysis
tools is called "VocabProfile."

Now why is this tool important?

Well, let's imagine that your students
know the 2,800 words of the NGSL

and you want to introduce to them
a native speaker level text.

How do you know if the text is at
the right level for those students or not?

Well, VocabProfile is one of the tools
that can help you to do that.

So what I've got here,
the way the tool works,

you just copy and paste the text
you want to analyze

into the white box
that you in the center there,

you click on the NGSL button
and then hit submit.

And what you get

is a really nice color-coded
readout of the difficulty of the text.

And what I've done here
is I've copied and pasted

into the textbox
the first chapter of Harry Potter.

And what we can see
on the next screen here

is that Harry Potter,
if you know the NGSL words,

you'll have about 93% coverage.

You'll know 93%
of the words in Harry Potter

if you know just
the 2,800 words in the NGSL.

So VocabProfile is one really nice tool.

I've helped to create
another tool, called OGTE -

that's the one on the right -

and also another one,
called Antwordprofiler,

also uses the NGSL -
that's the one on the left.

So there's definitely
a growing range of analytical tools

that you can use with the NGSL.

Now, what about students?

So we have these 2,800 words.

Let's say a teacher wants
their students to learn those words.

Well, where do they begin?

They already know some English,

so they're going to know
some of those words.

They don't want to study them all.
Where's the best place to start?

Well, if we want to know
their starting point,

we need a test.

So, two researchers down in Miyazaki
developed a really nice test called NGSLT.

And this short test allows you
to very quickly figure out

where your strengths and weaknesses are
in terms of knowledge of the NGSL.

And the nice thing is as soon as
it's identified your weakness in the NGSL,

it sort of sends you over to Quizlet

so that you can start learning
those exact words via flashcards.

In addition to the NGSL -

that's the box in yellow at the bottom,
NGSL is general English -

once you've mastered the NGSL,
there are other shortcuts as well.

If you're a student going
on to a four-year school,

a four-year university
in an English-speaking country,

there are certain academic words

that occur very, very frequently
in academic lectures and academic text.

And we've made a list -

that's the top left
green one, called the NAWL -

that's a list of academic words that can
help you to succeed in academic settings.

The one in the center is our TOEIC list -

that gives 99% coverage for if you are
trying to pass the TOEIC exam.

And then we're also working
on a business English list as well.

So if you want more
information about the NGSL,

you can go to our website.

You can find out about it on Wikipedia.

We also have a Facebook page.

And all of these are our places to go

if you want to sort of look at the
kind of resources that we've developed.

I hope that through this presentation

you've come to understand
that all words are not created equally,

that there are certain words

that are very important
and can really help our students.

And I and my colleagues
who made this list,

we're just very happy
that we could make a small contribution

to helping our students
to maybe get proficient in English

a little bit more quickly.

So, thank you very much for your time.

(Applause) (Cheers)

Patrick: Thanks, man.