Building vocabulary
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Are some words more important than others?
Well ...,
Beginners learn everyday words in order to start communicating The first 2,000 words are all very basic. However, those 2,000 words cover something like 80% of an ordinary book page. That sounds good, doesn't it? Well, there are around 400 words in an ordinary book page, so if you know the first 2,000 words and none of the next 1,000,000, you miss about 80 words on that page, and you will not understand enough. Learning the most common 2,000, or 4,000 words, is practically unavoidable, but it won't get you very far when it comes to reading a newspaper or a university textbook.
Until you've learnt your first 4,000, every word is important! Later on you may start picking and choosing. Here is an example; There are about 600 words that are much more common in academic than in "ordinary" texts. Learning those words pays off.
