Most common words in English
The most common words in English. The English language has a huge number of words to learn. English has over 100,000 word families, which are words with the same root (like “played”, “playful” and “playing” which all share the root word “play”).
It also gains around three new words every day… OMG!
But research shows that there’s no reason to be scared. You will be able to understand about 65% of all written material in the English language with only 300 words. Yes only 300 words.
Why you don’t need as many words as you think
Have you ever heard of the 80/20 principle? This fascinating idea is well-known in economics and business. It explains that in many skills 20% of your time and energy generates 80% of your results. The same rule can be applied to language learning, too.
With this in mind, let’s take a look at the research of Dr. Edward Fry, who collected the most common English words for his book Dr. Fry’s 1000 Instant Words. He found that the 25 most commonly used words appear in a huge 30% of written material in English.
The first 100 are used in about 50%, and the first 300 are used in about 65%.
Dr. Fry’s findings mean that with just 300 words, you can understand the majority of texts written in English. Pretty incredible, huh?
The 300 most common words in English
Dr. Fry’s word lists have helped English learners young and old develop their core vocabulary.
I’ve collected the most common English words below, split into the major word classes (verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs) and four more word classes (prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions and contractions).
If you see some words repeated in these lists, don’t forget that many English words can be in more than one class.
Most common words in English
Most Common Verbs in English
| is | was | are | be | have |
| had | were | can | said | use |
| do | will | would | make | like |
| has | look | write | go | see |
| could | been | call | am | find |
| did | get | come | made | may |
| take | know | live | give | think |
| say | have | tell | follow | came |
| want | show | set | put | does |
| must | ask | went | read | need |
| move | try | change | play | spell |
| found | study | learn | should | add |
| keep | start | thought | saw | turn |
| might | close | seem | open | begin |
| got | run | walk | began | grow |
| took | carry | hear | stop | miss |
| eat | what | let | cut | talk |
| being | leave | - | - | - |
Most Common Nouns in English
| word | time | number | way | people |
| water | day | part | sound | work |
| place | year | back | thing | name |
| sentence | man | line | boy | farm |
| end | men | land | home | hand |
| picture | air | animal | house | page |
| letter | point | mother | answere | America |
| world | food | country | plant | school |
| father | tree | city | earth | eye |
| head | story | example | life | paper |
| group | children | side | feet | car |
| mile | night | sea | river | state |
| book | idea | face | indian | girl |
| mountain | list | song | family | - |
Most Common Adjectives in English
| he | a | one | all | an |
| each | other | many | some | two |
| more | long | new | little | most |
| good | great | right | mean | old |
| any | same | three | small | another |
| large | big | even | such | different |
| kind | still | high | every | own |
| light | left | feel | next | hard |
| both | important | white | four | second |
| enough | above | young | - | - |
Most common adverbs in English
| not | when | there | how | up |
| out | then | so | no | first |
| now | only | very | just | where |
| much | before | too | also | around |
| well | here | why | again | off |
| away | near | below | last | never |
| always | together | often | once | later |
| far | really | almost | sometimes | soon |
Most common prepositions in English
| of | to | in | for | on |
| with | at | from | by | about |
| into | down | over | after | through |
| between | under | along | until | without |
Most Common Pronouns in English
| you | that | it | he | his |
| they | i | this | what | we |
| your | which | she | their | them |
| these | her | him | my | who |
| its | me | our | us | something |
| those |
Common Conjunctions in English
| and | as | or | but |
| if | than | because | while |
Common Contractions in English
| it's | don't |
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Elena Malyshkina
James is a very professional teacher with whom i recommend to work 100%.
I had several goals before we start
1 – resume my English communication skills after almost a 10-year break
2 – not to afraid to speak because of the possible grammar mistakes
3 – expand my vocabulary to continue working in consulting business all over the world
And during our lessons we archived it on 100%, 100% and 70% now and “work in progress”.
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– James’ interest in student development is always felt
I highly recommend working and have progressed in English with James!
Ilya
We have been working with Jimmi since October 2021. He is an excellent teacher who is ready to adapt to your wishes. We had excellent and productive IELTS preparation classes and had wonderful conversational classes where we discussed various topics and our hobbies. It turned out that Jimmi loves music and Formula 1, just like me. Classes are fun and fruitful!
Dmitry
“Смело могу рекомендовать James кака репетитора английского языка.
Открытый и доброжелательный человек. Общение идет только на английском, так как другого языка он не знает. Объясняет все доходчиво и понятно. Преподаватель адаптирует стили ведения урока под знания ученика, знаю так как мой сын также учился у James.
Нет напряжения и отношения- я учитель, ты ученик. С James ты изучаешь настоящий английский –английский.
Nikita Mukhin
После 2,5 лет в международной школе у 12- летнего сына был приличный уровень английского, поэтому когда мы прервали обучение там, стали искать репетитора “native speaker”. Джимми Монк стал настоящей находкой для нас! Два урока в неделю по скайпу в течение года позволили не только сохранить набранный уровень, но и существенно продвинуться в лексике. Очень важно, что сын слышал от учителя “настоящий британский английский”, не отягощенный акцентом.
Через год, вернувшись в международную школу, сын смог успешно сдать вступительный тест и не испытывал значительных сложностей в общении с преподавателями и своими позврослевшими англоговорящими одноклассниками. Спасибо Джимми за это!
Polina Mark and Kira
Yulia Anisakharova,
When I started learning English with James my speaking skills were so poor, that I asked him to work on General English instead of Marketing. I felt very uncomfortable while speaking. Months were passing by, James was providing me with such complex topics, which I almost never speak about in Russian. I struggled with discussing them. But in 3 months I was able to easily go through a job interview! I haven’t even realised when I became such confident! And James provided me with useful idioms, such expressions that natives use, like “I’m in between jobs” instead of “I don’t work currently”. Also, I want to mention that James is an incredibly interesting person to talk to! He has more than 20 years of travelling experience and so many brilliant stories to tell from there! So I’m very happy that I could learn from him!
Yulia Anisakharova,
Moscow, Russia
Sergei
Business English was what I wanted, But not just business I wanted pacifically Law. And James organized a perfect course for me and gave me all the vocabulary and grammar used for law. We studied for 6 months. What I like about James is he will just do things as and when needed. We work on my pronunciation and fluency and confidence It only took 6 months to get my fluency perfect. James is a great language coach and I advise anyone that choosing James would be the right decision. Really thank you, James
