The New Dolch Word List

NEW! NDL 1.1 Release (2.15.23)

After much discussion about what constitutes a “word” (and based on some very helpful feedback from teachers with experience using the original Dolch List), we have made some revisions to the list to include a number of inflected pronouns. The latest version of the list will be called NDL 1.1 and will include the following additions:

I: Added ME, MY, MINE

You: Added YOUR, YOURS

He: Added HIS HIM

She: Added HER, HERS

It: Added ITS

We: Added OUR, OURS

They: Added THEM, THEIR, THEIRS

This: Added THESE

That: Added THOSE

You can download the latest 1.1 version of the NDL below, or the original 1.0 archived version below that. Please note that our new NGSL Profiler tool as well as all other online learning tools will use the latest NDL 1.1 version.

Summary:

  • 17 words added to existing headwords as show above

  • 1 headword deleted (MINE, as it is now part of I)

  • NDL 1.0 - 875 words offering 90% coverage for most children’s texts

  • NDL 1.1 - 874 words will offer substantially higher coverage for most children’s texts

For example, the NDL 1.0 version offered 86% coverage for the Dr. Seuss story “Cat in the Hat” but jumped to 90% coverage with the NDL 1.1. 

New Dolch List

The New Dolch List, also known as the NDL , was developed with the goal of creating a reliable and valid corpus-based list of high frequency English words important for young second language learners to be able to successfully interact with EFL learning materials, other EFL learners, as well as popular children’s TV shows and children’s picture books.

The NDL is a significant update of the original Dolch list, which was published back in 1936 by Edward William Dolch (Dolch, 1936). That list contained 220 sight words, words which need to be quickly and easily recognized to achieve reading fluency in English as well as an additional list of 95 important nouns. It has been argued that up to 70% of all words used in schoolbooks, library books, newspapers, and magazines are a part of the Dolch basic sight word vocabulary. Though quite dated, the Dolch lists are still widely assigned for memorization in American elementary schools and used in ESL and EFL settings and materials around the world.

That said, a wordlist is only as good as the corpus it is based on. Like West’s 1953 General Service List (GSL), which was replaced by the New General Service List (Browne, 2013), the Dolch 1936 list has often been criticized for being based on outdated resources. The English language changes and evolves over time and an update to the 90-year-old Dolch list was long overdue.

The original Dolch list was based on a corpus and word lists designed only for native speakers of English attending primary school in English speaking countries. English is now taught and studied as a second language in countries around the globe and the original Dolch list was not designed with these needs in mind. EFL learners do not get as much input in English as those living in English speaking countries and the sources of input are more limited. EFL textbooks, children’s songs, children’s textbooks and children’s TV shows are usually the primary sources of input for most EFL learners and we have created a corpus of such materials to generate a list of the most important words for EFL learners in the hopes that this would be a valuable asset to EFL teachers, students, textbook authors and educational software developers around the world. The NDL is based on a carefully selected, 2.5-million-word corpus of children’s reading and listening materials as follows:

The 315 words of the original Dolch word list (220 sight words plus 95 nouns) were said to offer up to 70% coverage, though there do not seem to be any empirical papers to verify this claim. Even so, at the same number of words (315) our NDL offers a significantly higher 78% coverage. That said, 78% is not nearly enough for students to be able to read, listen to, and comprehend texts, so we have expanded our NDL to 875 words at which point the coverage is 90% for most children’s written texts and even higher for chidren’s TV and YouTube videos.

NDL 1.0 Teaching, Learning & Content Development Tools:

  1. NDL 1.1 on NGSL Profiler (text analysis, text simplification & AI text generation tools)

  2. NDL 1.0 Word-Learner app with gamification & LMS (soon!)

CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE

  • New Dolch List by Browne, C. and Culligan, B., is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

  • Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.charlie-browne.com