The question then arises, to what extent does the vocabulary knowledge of a typical Japanese high school graduate correspond to this base of 5000 high-frequency words. Alas, the answer to this question is not encouraging. Research by Laufer,3) cited in Brown, found students’ vocabulary ranging from 300 to 3000 words, and this range was confirmed by a study which further showed that although Japanese junior high school concentrates on teaching highfrequency words and achieves good coverage of the first 2000 most frequent English words, the coverage of high-frequency words beyond this in Japanese high school English textbooks was poor.