Image by woodleywonderworks from flickr.com.

You might think that learning the most common words in English would really help you out, right? So, let’s take a look at the top 10 most common words in English and see.

Top 10 most commonly used words in English:
1.    the
2.    of
3.    to
4.    and
5.    a
6.    in
7.    is
8.    it
9.    you
10.    that

What do you think, are these words important to know? Are they helpful? YES, of course they are, but knowing just these 10 words isn’t going to get you very far in a conversation now will it.

In this list we have 1 verb (is), 2 articles (the, a), a number of prepositions (of, to, in), 1 conjunction (and), and 3 pronouns (you, that, it). It is not surprising that these are among the most commonly used words in English because the verb ‘to be’ is the most commonly used verb in English and prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns are the glue that hold sentences together. Although these words are very practical, they are not descriptive. This is why building and growing a strong vocabulary, not just memorizing the most common words,  is so important to learning a new language.

Many of the posts I write for this blog are about specific vocabulary words, but all of my posts have tons of vocabulary in them, which you can pick up through the context of the sentence or you can look up on-line while you are reading. In fact, here are some great dictionary websites you can use to look up words.

http://www.learnersdictionary.com/

http://www.merriam-webster.com/

In order to help you build your vocabulary more Transparent Language also has a number of FREE ‘Word of the Day’ vocabulary building programs. You can check these out here and have words in your native language with English translation sent to you daily.

As your vocabulary grows you’ll likely see that the top 10 most commonly used words in English, listed above, pop up all the time in what you say. These words will be the ones to help you connect together all the amazing vocabulary you will be learning by reading this blog and other authentic English language material regularly.