Abstract
This article examines whether a 500-word vocabulary threshold, considered as aminimal lexical level, is sufficient for developing critical reading skills of literary texts in Englishamong secondary school students. The study is based on a comparative analysis of an experimentallist of 500 words by Matveev, and the official Oxford 3000 frequency list (by CEFR levels), as wellas an assessment of comprehension of an adapted literary text fragment from an 8th-grade textbook.It was found that approximately 95% of the experimental list words are included in the official Oxford3000 list, and that mastering this vocabulary allows understanding 86.6% of the words in theanalyzed text, providing an acceptable level of semantic comprehension. The evaluation of contenttransmission demonstrated a sufficient level of text perception despite the limited vocabulary. Theresults indicate that the 500-word lexical threshold is minimally sufficient for the development ofcritical reading skills at the initial stage of learning English, which has practical implications forforeign language teaching methodology.