NGSL Wordlist Update
Like the original General Service List (GSL) which was developed over a 17 year period between 1936 and its final publication date in 1953, so too, our New General Service List (NGSL) and accompanying special purpose (SP) word lists including for academic English (NAWL), TOEIC English (TSL), business English (BSL) and fitness English (FEL), are still in the process of being updated, refined and improved.
This month, following the renewal of our NGSL Project website, we are releasing our third wordlist update since the NGSL’s release in 2013, which we are referring to as the 1.2 version.
English language usage changes over time and in even a period as short as 10 years since the NGSL’s initial release, we are seeing some of our words that were originally designated as SP words becoming popular and frequent enough for us to move them to be a part of the NGSL core general vocabulary list.
Based on excellent feedback from vocabulary researchers such as Dr. Tim Stoeckel (developer of the New General Service List Test, New Academic Word List Test and publisher of several important articles on the NGSL), online language learning companies who make extensive use of NGSL Project lists such as EnglishCentral (whose feedback is based on how the NGSL words occur in their large corpus of 20K+ authentic English videos), and many deep and heartfelt discussions between Dr. Culligan, Joe Phillips and myself, we have made a number of additions to the NGSL, which in several cases also necessitated deletions from one or more of our SP lists.
A total of 13 changes were made as follows:
BEST: added to the headword GOOD
BETTER: added to the headword GOOD
BLOG: moved to NGSL from BSL and FEL
BORN: added to the headword BEAR
CANDIDATE: moved to NGSL from NAWL, TSL and BSL
CLICK: moved to NGSL from NAWL, TSL, BSL and FEL
CONFERENCE: moved to NGSL from NAWL, TSL and BSL
CRITERIA: changed CRITERION to CRITERIA, removed CRITERIA from NAWL, TSL and BSL
DATA: changed DATUM to DATA
IMMIGRATION: moved to NGSL from TSL and BSL
ROSE: moved to NGSL from TSL and BSL
SOLAR: moved to NGSL from NAWL, TSL and BSL
WEBSITE: moved to NGSL from NAWL, TSL, BSL and FEL
Overall these constitute fairly minor changes and each list still offers the highest coverage in the world for its genre (between 92% and 99%). On our new website (www.newgeneralservicelist.com), each list now has its own dedicated page where you can read a brief explanation of the list and its corpus, download the 1.2 version of each list (or older versions of the lists if you prefer) as well as our many free online teaching and learning resources.
As with all our wordlists, the 1.2 versions are open-source and free to use (or even modify) under a Creative Commons Share and ShareAlike license which is listed at the bottom of the page for each wordlist. The 1.2 update affects the following lists - I have included a direct link to each list’s homepage for convenience:
General English (NGSL 1.2)
Academic English (NAWL 1.2)
TOEIC English (TSL 1.2)
Business English (BSL 1.2)
Fitness English (FEL 1.2)
We hope these resources will help your learners on the road to success in English!