Oxford 3000 and Oxford 5000: The Most Important Words to Learn in English

Marlise Horst is Associate Professor Emerita of Applied Linguistics at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Her research focuses on second language vocabulary acquisition. She is the author of Focus on Vocabulary (2019). She has recently completed an ESL coursebook for Maison de l’amitié, a community centre in Montreal where she once trained intern teachers and now teaches a class one evening a week.

James Milton is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Swansea University, UK. After teaching in Nigeria and Libya, he established the Centre for Applied Language Studies and the Department of Applied Linguistics in Swansea in 1985. He also works on publishing and consultancy projects both in the UK and around the world, including China, South Korea, Singapore, Greece, and Italy. His main areas of interest are second language acquisition, vocabulary learning, and the mental lexicon. His publications include Dimensions of Vocabulary Knowledge (2014, with Tess Fitzpatrick), Measuring Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition (2009), and Modelling and Assessing Vocabulary Knowledge (2007, with Helmut Daller and Jeanine Treffers-Daller).

Paul Nation is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He has taught in Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, the USA, and Finland. His publications include How Vocabulary is Learned (2017, with Stuart Webb), Making and Using Word Lists for Language Learning and Testing (2016), and Learning Vocabulary in Another Language (2013, 2nd edition). Many free resources for teachers and researchers, including word lists, vocabulary tests, articles, and resources for reading can be found on his website (see Further reading and resources).

Julie Moore is a freelance ELT writer, lexicographer, and corpus researcher based in Bristol, UK. Her specialist area of interest is teaching vocabulary. She has worked on a number of learner’s dictionaries and other vocabulary resources, including the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Academic English (2014), Oxford Academic Vocabulary Practice (2017), and ETpedia Vocabulary (2019, with Fiona Mauchline and Stacey Hughes). She is also a regular conference speaker and teacher trainer. Julie is the author on this paper.