Ghent University offers an online vocabulary test designed to provide a valid estimate of your English vocabulary size.
The test does not require you to define or spell words. Instead you are asked to determine whether an entry ("glyph," "moktam," "macrophage," "wookel" etc) is or is not a word in the English language.
There seemed to be about a hundred words in the test, which you can proceed through at your own pace, and you can retake it if you wish (with a different group of words on the retest). At the end you can review your errors and see the definitions of the words you missed.
I don't know how to interpret my results (second trial shown). I correctly recognized 94% of their offered words, but I almost certainly don't know 94% of all the words in the English language. Or maybe I do. Perhaps someone can drill down into their methodology.
Interesting indeed. I said chemisette and demulcent weren't words, but they are. I know chemise, of course, and I know dulcet (which seems related) but haven't run into these two.
ReplyDeleteFrom their FAQs, "we estimate that a proficient native speaker will know some 40,000 words of the list (i.e., 67%)". Also they say they stand by the statistical accuracy if you do the test ten times, but don't say anything about what the curve would look like for any one person over ten trials, how much deviation.
You said yes to 97% of the existing words.
You said yes to 0% of the nonwords.
This gives you a corrected score of 97% - 0% = 97%.
Demulcent is like Ibuprofen... The other one I'd never heard. I got 90% as well I said Yes to a non-word. A word for a Douth African celebratory dance. LOL
DeleteNo it isn't. It's more like a salve for a rash, or slippery elm for a sore throat.
DeleteDemulcent is NOT like Ibuprofen. It is like taking slippery elm for a sore throat - it is the characteristic of forming a slippery film over an inflamed area of mucus membrane.
Deletechemisette is like a dicky for women. Looks like a blouse under another garment, but doesn't have anything but a neck/collar and panel(s) to fill in low necklines, etc.
DeleteInteresting, glad to help the research.
ReplyDeleteGot 84% due to not knowing an English brand name.... among some other silly words. Playing scrabble also kind of messes with your word recognizing brain, clicked "clegue" as a word and it was a false positive.
I said yes to 77% of existing words. Yes to 0% of nonwords. Not as good as the rest of you, but I'll take it. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm happy with my 67%. Mind you, speaking English as a second language.
ReplyDelete97% - 3% = 94%
ReplyDeleteBetter than expected.
70% with no false positives.
ReplyDeleteFrom a check of the ones I missed, there were probably 5-10 that I almost pressed 'yes' to but didn't because whilst I thought they probably were real words (they made sense structurally) I didn't want to get any false-positives so was more cautious :-)
I thought I'd ace this test since I got 800 on the language portion of the GRE (years ago), but I only got 82 percent right. I must say I was confused by words such as "yelper."
ReplyDeleteI did really well, 97% on one and 96% on another, but some of the words gave me a real pause. After a string of easy-to-tell-they-were-real words, GEETER popped up. Reflex almost got me when I initially saw GREETER. I almost wonder if they set it up to see if we are paying attention. Mostly I struggled with words I don’t think of as words, things that are slang or compound words that ought to be separate, like GRINGO and OVERSWEET. I wondered if it was a trick and I should click no. I also have to wonder why KOPECK is a yes answer on this. It is Russian in all ways. When we use the word we are referring only to a Russian thing. It has no separate English meaning at all.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, Helen, but I don't understand the point of your closing sentences. Kopeck (or kopek) IS an English word. It's not a Russian word (they would say "kopeyka" or "копе́йка." Granted, it describes a Russian thing, but it is totally an English word. There are thousands of other examples of such.
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