Top Ten Sight Words

Before we divulge the top ten sight words, we need to understand the word, lexeme. Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines this word as a meaningful linguistic unit that is an item in the vocabulary of a language. Perhaps an example will illustrate this simple concept that when defined makes my head spin. A great example is the the word, be, which has the following lexemes – am, is, are, was, were, been and being. “Be” is called the lemma.

Interestingly enough, ten different lemmas account for approximately 25% of all the one billion words used in the Oxford English Corpus; that’s one out of four words. These ten words are included in Fry’s top twenty-five instant word list as well as included in the Dolch sight word list. These words are commonly referred to as sight words or high frequency words.

Top 10 Sight Words

Drum roll, please …

It is important to note that Dr. Fry’s top ten differ slightly. Two words are not in his top ten but rather top twenty-five; they are “have” and “I”. All of these words are incorporated in the sight word board game, Erudition™.

Sources: http://www.askoxford.com
http://www.merriam-webster.com