The authors report a student comparing the 306 words on the Basic Vocabulary for Beginning Reading with their occurrences in first- and/or second-grade reading materials in ten basic series currently in use. All 306 words were found in at least one of the series, and nearly 90 percent of the words occur in over half of the series. Even though the basic vocabulary was derived from sources other than basal readers (a computer-aided analysis of printed English and a study of the spontaneous vocabulary of young children), it is apparent that the majority of the words are common to a number of basic-reading series.
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