Do I need both NGSL and NAWL?

**Start with NGSL for Tier 1, then add NAWL after Tier 1 completion** — that is the cleanest order. **NGSL is free** so there is no purchase decision to make at the start. **NAWL is also free**; whether to buy a print edition is personal. **Pairing with EnglishBlitz Vocabulary** removes the need to buy anything.

Single book cover-to-cover vs frequency-band split?

**Frequency-band split is much more efficient**. Mass-market vocabulary books often arrange by **difficulty or alphabet**, not frequency, so **Tier 1 and Tier 3 get equal weight**. **Beginners should pour ~75% of study time into Tier 1**, which means **frequency-ordered lists + an EnglishBlitz tier filter** beats any single book.

How do I memorize polysemous words?

**Learn a core image + 3-4 sense-tagged examples** instead of the dictionary list. For **run**: core = "linear motion", then **(1) to run (move), (2) to run (manage a business), (3) to run (an engine), (4) to run (for office)** with examples. **EnglishBlitz Vocabulary Mode shows multi-sense examples** for polysemous items.

Tier 1 test gave 80 — can I move to Tier 2?

**80-89 = soft completion**. You can move on, but **continue Tier 1 weak-spot review in parallel**. **90+ is real completion**. **<70 — restart Tier 1**. **Moving with shaky Tier 1 makes Tier 2 understanding shallow** and you usually end up coming back.

How do I build the paraphrase synonym map?

**Walk through Part 7 past papers** and record any **prompt-word ↔ correct-option-word** pair you spot, one per line. **improve = enhance / fix = rectify / buy = procure / end = terminate**. **100-150 pairs covers ~70% of Part 7 paraphrase items**. **EnglishBlitz Reading drill explanations also tabulate paraphrases**.

TOEIC LinkPublished May 2, 2026

TOEIC Link Vocabulary by Frequency Band — Tier 1 / Tier 2 / Tier 3 Priority and Score-Band Reach

Q: How do I build the paraphrase synonym map?

**Walk through Part 7 past papers** and record any **prompt-word ↔ correct-option-word** pair you spot, one per line. **improve = enhance / fix = rectify / buy = procure / end = terminate**. **100-150 pairs covers ~70% of Part 7 paraphrase items**. **EnglishBlitz Reading drill explanations also tabulate paraphrases**.

TOEIC Link vocabulary fits inside roughly 6,000 core items, and the top 2,000 items cover ~75% of all questions while the top 4,000 cover ~92%. Treating every word as equally important is exactly why score-200-300 learners stall after 100 hours of study. This guide quantifies the per-band question share, per-Part difficulty, score-band reach, and a 200-hour weekly plan to clear all 6,000 items.

TOEIC Link vocabulary frequency map

Tier definition. A unified ranking from BNC (British National Corpus) and COCA (Contemporary Corpus of American English) gives Tier 1 = 1-2000, Tier 2 = 2001-4000, Tier 3 = 4001-6000. Items beyond 6,000 appear in <5% of TOEIC Link questions and are safely ignored at the start.

Question share (Volume 1-3 + 100 mock sets). Tier 1 carries 75.3% of all questions, Tier 2 16.8%, Tier 3 7.4%, and 6001+ only 0.5%. Mastering Tier 1 alone covers three-quarters of every test.

Per-Part frequency mix. - Part 1 (photographs): Tier 1 92%, Tier 2 7%, Tier 3 1% — most concentrated - Part 2 (question-response): Tier 1 85%, Tier 2 12%, Tier 3 3% - Part 3 (conversations): Tier 1 76%, Tier 2 18%, Tier 3 6% - Part 4 (talks): Tier 1 65%, Tier 2 24%, Tier 3 11% — pulls the highest tier - Part 5-7 (Reading): Tier 1 70%, Tier 2 20%, Tier 3 10%

Listening uses easier words; Reading uses harder ones, so Tier 2 study becomes mandatory once you target 250+.

Tier 1 (1-2000) covers 75%
Tier 2 (2001-4000) adds 17%
Tier 3 (4001-6000) adds 7%
6001+ is safe to skip
Part 1 most concentrated
Part 4 reaches Tier 3

Score-band vocabulary reach

Median learner reach (EnglishBlitz, N=4,200). 150-200: 1,500 words. 200-250: 2,500. 250-300: 3,500. 300-350: 4,500. 350+: 5,500+. Each 50-point gain requires ~1,000 more words as a rule of thumb.

Priority by target score. - Below 250: 90% of Tier 1. Do not touch Tier 2 yet - 250-300: 95%+ Tier 1 + 60-70% of Tier 2 (2001-3000) - 300-350: 80%+ of all Tier 2 + start the upper Tier 3 (4001-5000) - 350+: 70%+ of all Tier 3 + a paraphrase map (e.g., dispatch / convey / forward synonym set)

Time budget. Reaching 90% Tier 1 takes 100-120 hours, through Tier 2 needs 200 hours, through Tier 3 needs 350 hours. At one hour per day, 3-4 months for Tier 1, 6-7 months through Tier 2, 11-12 months through Tier 3.

You do not need 100% of every tier. Reach the tier that matches your target score and stop expanding outward — depth beats breadth.

~1,000-word wall every 50 pts
<250: Tier 1 only
300: full Tier 2
350+: full Tier 3
Tier 1 reach: 100-120 hrs
Tier 3 reach: 350 hrs

How to study Tier 1 (1-2000)

Resource priority. (1) NGSL (New General Service List) 2,800-word edition (free, fully covers Tier 1). (2) EnglishBlitz Vocabulary Tier 1 drills. (3) Junior- and senior-high textbooks for known-word verification. Audit known vocabulary first before buying anything new.

Method. 30 minutes / day, 50 new + 100 review for four weeks reaches the entire Tier 1. Spaced repetition (1 day / 3 days / 1 week / 2 weeks) lifts retention from ~60% to ~85% (Anki / EnglishBlitz Memory Mode covers this).

High-yield items inside Tier 1. - Verbs: be / have / do / get / make / take / see / know / think / come / go / give / tell / find / leave (15 verbs cover 50% of all Listening verb usage) - Nouns: time / people / way / day / man / thing / woman / life / child / world (10 nouns cover 25% of frequent nouns) - Adjectives: good / new / first / last / long / great / little / own / other / old (10 cover 30%) - Adverbs: not / so / very / well / just / how / when / where / now / then

Polysemy. run / get / make / take / set / see carry 5-8 distinct senses each in TOEIC Link. One word = one meaning is not enough. Learn senses with example sentences in parallel.

Tier 1 completion test. Random 100-item recall — 90+ correct = done. 80-89 = soft completion (continue review while moving on). <80 = restart Tier 1.

NGSL is the spine
30 min/day + 50 new
Spaced repetition required
15 verbs = 50% of Listening verbs
Polysemy via examples
100-item recall ≥90 = complete

How to study Tier 2 (2001-4000)

Tier 2 character. Business vocabulary (revenue / acquisition / quarterly / dispatch / forward / amend), abstract nouns (efficiency / consistency / awareness / commitment), and phrasal verbs (set up / put off / look into / get back to). Different in nature from Tier 1, so reusing Tier 1 study habits is suboptimal.

Resource priority. (1) NAWL (New Academic Word List) 960. (2) BSL (Business Service List) 1,700. (3) EnglishBlitz Vocabulary Tier 2 drills. (4) Unknown-word lists from Part 5-7 of past papers. Past-paper extraction is the most efficient driver in Tier 2.

Phrasal verb clustering. Learn families together: set up / set off / set out / set aside / set back as a 5-pack. look into / look up / look over / look forward to as another. 200 phrasal verbs in Tier 2 cover ~70% of Part 3-4 response patterns.

Collocations over isolates. Do not memorize "revenue" alone — learn the quarterly revenue / total revenue / revenue growth / revenue forecast quartet. Collocation learning outperforms isolated word lists more in Tier 2 than in Tier 1.

Tier 2 completion test. Listening scripts in Part 3-4 with <5% unknown words, Part 7 reading with <8% unknown. Higher unknown rates force guess-reading, which caps you below 300.

Business vocabulary core
NAWL + BSL spine
Phrasal verbs by family
Collocations over isolates
Past-paper extraction
<5% unknown in scripts = done

How to study Tier 3 (4001-6000)

Tier 3 character. Academic vocabulary (procurement / litigation / encompass / scrutinize), specialized business (amortization / depreciation / arbitration), rare adjectives (meticulous / pertinent / diligent / forthcoming). Appears in 10-15% of Part 4 + Part 7 items, but score 350 is reachable through context inference even with imperfect Tier 3 mastery.

Resource priority. (1) AWL (Academic Word List) 570. (2) EnglishBlitz Vocabulary Tier 3 drills. (3) WSJ / Bloomberg / Economist business articles 3 / week with unknown-word extraction. Real business English contact is the most natural Tier 3 path.

Paraphrase importance. Part 7 correct options frequently restate the prompt vocabulary. Build a synonym map: dispatch ↔ send, convey ↔ communicate, scrutinize ↔ examine carefully, commence ↔ begin. Adds 8-12 points of accuracy.

When to skip Tier 3. Below 300, Tier 3 study is poor ROI. Pushing Tier 1 + Tier 2 to 95%+ pays better. The "ceiling vs foundation" decision is set by your target score and total study budget.

Academic + specialized business
AWL spine
WSJ / Economist for live vocab
Paraphrase synonym map essential
+8-12 pts in Part 7
<300 target: Tier 3 skippable

Per-tier reach criteria and time budgets

Tier	Range	Question share	Score reach	Time to complete	Main resources
Tier 1	1-2000	75%	200+	100-120 hrs	NGSL / school texts
Tier 2	2001-4000	17%	300+	+80-100 hrs	NAWL / BSL
Tier 3	4001-6000	7%	350+	+130-150 hrs	AWL / WSJ
6001+	6001-	0.5%	n/a	n/a	n/a

* Question share aggregated from Volume 1-3 + 100 mock sets. Time-to-complete is the median from EnglishBlitz internal data (N=4,200).

Six rules for frequency-band vocabulary

Tier 1 covers 75%; start there
~1,000 words per 50-point gain
Reach the tier that matches the target
Spaced repetition is non-optional
Tier 2 = phrasal verbs + collocations
Tier 3 = paraphrase synonym map

Drill by tier in EnglishBlitz Vocabulary flashcards

Frequently Asked Questions

TOEIC® and TOEIC Link™ are registered trademarks of ETS. EnglishBlitz is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with ETS. Question shares, vocabulary reach, and time budgets reflect EnglishBlitz internal analysis and public corpora (NGSL / NAWL / AWL / BSL) and serve as indicative guides; individual exams and learners may vary.