4000 Essential English Words 1 is one of the best vocabulary books that are going to boost your words in English.
4000 Essential English Words
The 600 words in each book of this series along with the additional target words presented in the appendices included in the first three books of the series are the most useful words in English.
They were found by analysis of a collection of English coursebooks from various levels in the primary, secondary, and tertiary school systems. The words included in this series were chosen because they occurred many times in different levels of these materials. Because of the way that they were chosen, these words have the following characteristics:
- Have students create vocabulary cards with one word from the unit on one side of the card and the translation of the word in the student’s first language on the other side. Students should use the cards for study in free moments during the day. Over several weeks, students will find that quick repeated studying for brief periods of time is more effective than studying for hours at one sitting.
- Assign graded readers at students’ appropriate levels. Reading such books provides both enjoyment as well as meaning-focused input which will help the words stick in students’ memory.
- Practice reading fluency to promote faster recall of word meaning for both sight recognition and usage. Compass Publishing’s Reading for Speed and Fluency is a good resource for reading fluency material.
- Include listening, speaking, and writing activities in classes. Reinforcement of the high-frequency vocabulary presented in this series is important across all the four language skills.
Download 4000 Essential English Words 1 (PDF+Audio)
4000 Essential English Words Book 1 by Paul Nation is a wonderful and well-organized vocabulary book. Each unit has 20 target words with multiple learning exercises that learners can use to practice the vocabulary.
Also, I was happy to see that the book uses the target words in a reading passage. This allows the learner to see how the words are used in context while also providing some comprehension questions over the reading material.
In addition, you can download audio recordings of the vocabulary words and of the reading passages from the publisher’s website.
I am confident this book will be a great benefit to my ESL students who desperately need direct vocabulary instruction.
About The Book
The activities in these books are specially designed to make use of important learning conditions.
Firstly, the words are introduced using sentence definitions and an example sentence. The activities that follow in the units encourage learners to recall the meanings and forms of the words.
Some activities also make the learners think about the meaning of the words in the context of a sentence—a sentence different from the sentences that occurred in the introduction of the words.
Moreover, each unit ends with a story containing the target words. While reading the story, the learners have to recall the meanings of the words and suit them to the context of the story. Such activities help learners develop a better understanding of a common meaning for a given word which fits the different uses.
Illustrations for each target word are provided to help learners visualize the word as it is being used in the example sentence. These word/image associations aim to help students grasp the meaning of the word as well as recall the word later.
It should be noted that words have more than one grammatical category. However, this series focuses on the word’s most common form. This is mentioned to remind learners that just because a word is labeled and utilized as a noun in this series does not mean that it can never be used in another form such as an adjective. This series has simply focused on the word in the form that it is most likely to be expressed.
