diff --git a/graphrag/index/operations/build_noun_graph/np_extractors/resource_loader.py b/graphrag/index/operations/build_noun_graph/np_extractors/resource_loader.py
index ed6c5a8190..796e27adaa 100644
--- a/graphrag/index/operations/build_noun_graph/np_extractors/resource_loader.py
+++ b/graphrag/index/operations/build_noun_graph/np_extractors/resource_loader.py
@@ -3,13 +3,16 @@
 
 """Util functions needed for nltk-based noun-phrase extractors (i.e. TextBlob)."""
 
+from functools import lru_cache
+
 import nltk
 
 
+@lru_cache(maxsize=64)
 def download_if_not_exists(resource_name) -> bool:
     """Download nltk resources if they haven't been already."""
-    # look under all possible categories
-    root_categories = [
+    # Precompute all category/resource_name paths for efficiency
+    root_categories = (
         "corpora",
         "tokenizers",
         "taggers",
@@ -24,11 +27,11 @@ def download_if_not_exists(resource_name) -> bool:
         "mt",
         "sentiment",
         "similarity",
-    ]
-    for category in root_categories:
+    )
+    resource_paths = [f"{category}/{resource_name}" for category in root_categories]
+    for path in resource_paths:
         try:
-            # if found, stop looking and avoid downloading
-            nltk.find(f"{category}/{resource_name}")
+            nltk.find(path)
             return True  # noqa: TRY300
         except LookupError:
             continue