Although there are plenty of vocabulary resources that we recommend at Confidence Learning Services, not the least of which is the Oxford Picture Dictionary, it’s important to look at the most common words in the English language.
Many of these words are “function” or “grammar” words, meaning they do not have a very concrete meaning but rather serve a grammatical purpose in a sentence. While we cannot attach pictures to these words, they are extremely useful to learn. Once you learn these words, you will be able to recognize, understand, and read a large percentage of the English language. In fact, some people estimate that these 100 words make up about 50% of written and spoken English.
Lists of the “100 Most Common Words in English” are available from a variety of sources, and there are slight variations from list to list. This is because these lists are derived from analyzing different materials from different sources, as no one can accurately analyze all of the written and spoken English in existence.
Unlike most lists, however, this is list is arranged by categories, making it much easier to study and understand these words. We recommend that you study one category at a time. You will likely be surprised by how often you encounter these words each day!
100 Most Common Words
Nouns
time | person | year | day | way |
Adjectives
new | one | two | first | good |
even | all | other | most |
Adverbs
not | no | well | there |
only | just | then | now |
Articles
the | a | an | some | any |
Conjunctions
but | and | or | so | also | than | because |
Pronouns
Subject:
I | you | he | she | it | we | they |
Possessive:
my | your | his | her | its | our | their |
Object:
me | him | us | them |
Demonstrative:
that | this | these | those |
Verbs
be | have | do | say | know | can | make | like | take | will* | could* |
go | come | think | use | work | want | give | get | look | would* |
*Auxiliary or other verb forms
Prepositions
to | of | in | for | on | as | at | with |
from | about | into | out | up | over | back | after |
Question
who | what | where | when | why | how |