The famous, over 150-year-old Oxford English Dictionary includes 600 000 English words. Of course, only a fraction of them are in active use nowadays. In practice, the vocabulary of a native English speaker consists of about 20 000–35 000 words. In contrast, the vocabulary of a student of English as a foreign language usually consists of about 2 500–9 000 words. Does that sound like a lot? In daily speech – at home, at work, and when travelling – you luckily need to be…
