In this companion post, I explain how I designed my one-thousand-word “starter pack” of words to prioritize when first starting to learn a language.
Introductory vocabulary is hard
I got fed up with a lot of pedagogical materials. Some introduce very specific vocabulary in conversational context. Context is good, and this gives you good coverage of phatic expressions and transition words, but unless done carefully this technique can leave out obviously-related words, like teaching ‘Is the door open?’ but forgetting ‘closed’.
Other times, a textbook will decide, “this is the house chapter” and list out every house word they can think of. My undergraduate German textbook taught me ‘vacuum cleaner’ before they got to ‘additionally’ or ‘how old are you’. I didn’t retain even half those words. These sources teach vocabulary that’s too broad.
Starting in 2017 I became interested in finding a “sweet spot.” There are a couple “starter pack” lists floating around on the language-learning internet. One famous one is Fluent Forever’s “Your First 625”. I like the idea of carefully curating a list. There’s a lot in this list I disagree with, though: how often do you say ‘outer space’? ‘Victim’? ‘Sex’? (In fairness, I think these were chosen because they’re easily visualizable and give you words to play with; I doubt the set is designed to be the only ones you learn.)
Designing the thousand
Finally, eight years later, I’m ready to publish my starter pack of a thousand words. My criteria were simple: whenever I looked up a word, I asked myself, am I mad I don’t know this yet? If I was, I found a way to squeeze it into the thousand.
Eventually, some really useful phrases emerged - ones that no textbook had ever taught me, but ones I constantly looked up due to their frequency and utility: ‘that’s why…’, ‘never mind’, ‘tell’ as in ‘I can’t tell if…’.
I had to make some really heartbreaking cuts to the list. The words I chose (and the categories I chose to present them in) are admittedly very subjective. Even today I admit some of those words are kind of borderline. But they represent an equilibrium reached after eight years of language learning, real-life usage, and constant revision.
Putting it to the test
I began learning French about six months ago for my research. Recognizing an opportunity to put my list to the test, I translated all my words into French and am currently in the middle of learning them. Once I have them down, I’m looking forward to seeing how communicative my thousand words let me become. Stay tuned?
My hope is that this can be helpful for other language learners and communities, especially those looking to create their own pedagogical materials. I’m putting my list under a CC BY 4.0 license. I would be greatly humbled by anyone who chooses to adapt it to teach language.