The 2000 Most useful words in the English language

GSL, 1995. — 18 pages.The General Service List (GSL) (West. 1953) is a set of 2,000 words selected to be of the greatest "general service" to learners of English. They are not the most common 2,000
words, though frequency was one of the factors taken into account in making the selection. Each of the 2,000 words is a headword representing a word family that is only loosely defined in West. Frequency numbers are given, derived from Thorndike and Lorge (1944). Frequency data is also given for the various meanings of words. This list has had a wide influence for many years, serving as the basis for graded readers as well as other material. Texts based on the GSL are still on sale, but the list itself is out of print. A fuller discussion of the GSL, and word lists in general, can be found in Nation (1990, pp 21-24) and Carter and McCarthy (1988, Ch. 1).
The list given here was created by John Bauman and Brent Culligan in early 1995.