Created by the authors of the In Focus series, the New General Service List Project is a collection of high-frequency English vocabulary word lists and learning resources, based on corpus linguistics research. Designed for ESL/EFL learners, teachers, and content developers, each list emphasizes practicality and real-world relevance, making them essential tools for rapid second language acquisition.

The core wordlist is called the New General Service List (NGSL), which is a list of the most important, foundational words of general English for second language learners. Building on the excellent work of Michael West and his colleagues, who in 1953 published the General Service List (GSL), the researchers have expanded, modernized, and improved upon their research to publish the NGSL in 2013 (Browne, 2013). Based on a 273-million-word subset of the Cambridge English Corpus, and updated in 2016 and 2023, the 2809 words of the NGSL 1.2 offer far more coverage with far fewer words than the original GSL, and is part of the researchers’ growing collection of free, open-source wordlists (seven as of 2023). Each list offers the highest coverage in the world for that genre and is accompanied by a large number of free online learning, teaching and content creation tools.

For more information about the NGSL Project use the links below to visit different parts of the NGSL Project’s dedicated website: