本文章由春喜在線英語(yǔ)于2017.2.24日編輯發(fā)布 

    古人云，“少壯不努力，老大背單詞”。各位掙扎在紅黃藍(lán)黑各種寶書(shū)中的同學(xué)或許要問(wèn)，這單詞要背到什么時(shí)候才算夠？我們不妨來(lái)看看外國(guó)人的詞匯量是多少。

　Britain’s Guardian newspaper, in 1986, estimated the size of the average person’s vocabulary as developing from roughly 300 words at two years old, through 5,000 words at five years old, to some 12,000 words at the age of 12. 

1986年，英國(guó)《衛(wèi)報(bào)》估算英國(guó)人2歲的單詞量約為300個(gè)，5歲時(shí)為5000個(gè)，到了12歲，詞匯量在12000個(gè)左右。

The Guardian’s research suggested that it stays at around this number of words for the remainder of most people’s lives—adding that this is roughly the same number of words as those drawn on by a popular newspaper in the course of producing its daily editions—while a graduate might have a vocabulary nearly twice as large (23,000 words). Shakespeare had one of the largest recorded vocabularies of any English writer at around 30,000 words. 

　　《衛(wèi)報(bào)》的研究認(rèn)為大多數(shù)人之后的詞匯量都不會(huì)有太大的變化。它還指出，12000詞匯量基本等同于流行報(bào)紙每天文章里的詞匯量。但是大學(xué)畢業(yè)生的詞匯量大約是其2倍，約23000個(gè)。莎士比亞則是所有英語(yǔ)作家中詞匯量最大的之一，高達(dá)約30000個(gè)單詞。 

Francis and Kucera (1982) suggest that the 2000 most frequent word families of English make up 79.7% of the individual words in any English text, the 3000 most frequent word families represent 84%， the 4000 most frequent word families make up about 86.7%， and the 5000 most frequent word families cover 88.6%. 

　　Francis和Kucera在1982年發(fā)表的研究結(jié)果稱(chēng)，2000個(gè)最常用單詞覆蓋了79.7%的英文文本內(nèi)容，最常用的3000單詞及變形的覆蓋率達(dá)到84%，4000最常用單詞及變形的覆蓋率為86.7%，當(dāng)詞匯量增加到5000時(shí)，覆蓋率為88.6%。 

　　綜上所述，英語(yǔ)學(xué)習(xí)者的第一個(gè)目標(biāo)是2000常用單詞，這樣就能看懂將近80%的英文內(nèi)容。至于終極目標(biāo)則是20000單詞，也就是和受過(guò)良好教育的英國(guó)人的詞匯量相當(dāng)。 

　　需要注意的是，認(rèn)識(shí)單詞和會(huì)用單詞是兩碼事。詞匯量達(dá)到一定水平后，在對(duì)話、寫(xiě)作中使用這些單詞的能力對(duì)英語(yǔ)水平的影響更大。