Introduction About the Vocabulary 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 course books 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:
1 They are useful in both spoken and written English. No matter what English
course you are studying, the words in these books will be of value to you.
2 Each word in these books is a high-frequency word. This means that the effort
in learning the words is well repaid by the number of times learners have a
chance to encounter or use them.
3 These books as a whole cover a large proportion of the words in any spoken or
written text. They cover at least 80% of the words in newspapers and academic
texts, and at least 90% of the words in novels. They also cover at least 90% of
the words in conversation.