Edward Thorndike - Thorndike's Word Books

Thorndike's Word Books

Thorndike composed three different word books to assist teachers with word and reading instruction. After publication of the first book in the series, The Teacher's Word Book (1921), two other books were written and published, each approximately a decade apart from its predecessor. The second book in the series, its full title being A Teacher's Word Book of the Twenty Thousand Words Found Most Frequently and Widely in General Reading for Children and Young People, was published in 1932, and the third and final book, The Teacher's Word Book of 30,000 Words, was published in 1944.

In the preface to the third book, Thorndike writes that the list contained therein “tells anyone who wishes to know whether to use a word in writing, speaking, or teaching how common the word is in standard English reading matter” (p. x), and he further advises that the list can best be employed by teachers if they allow it to guide the decisions they make choosing which words to emphasize during reading instruction. Some words require more emphasis than others, and, according to Thorndike, his list informs teachers of the most frequently occurring words that should be reinforced by instruction and thus become “a permanent part of stock of word knowledge” (p. xi). If a word is not on the list but appears in an educational text, its meaning only needs to be understood temporarily in the context in which it was found, and then summarily discarded from memory.

In Appendix A to the second book, Thorndike gives credit to his word counts and how frequencies were assigned to particular words. Selected sources extrapolated from Appendix A are:

• Children’s Reading: Black Beauty, Little Women, Treasure Island, A Christmas Carol, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Youth’s Companion, school primers, first readers, second readers, and third readers
• Standard Literature: The Bible, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Cowper, Pope, and Milton
• Common Facts and Trades: The United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, A New Book of Cookery, Practical Sewing and Dress Making, Garden and Farm Almanac, and mail-order catalogues

Thorndike also examined local newspapers and correspondences for common words to be included in the book.