English Vocabulary Test and Stats (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

English Vocabulary Test and Stats
Tags: Vocabulary learning \| English
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

s0fist
Diglot
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Message 1 of 7

01 August 2011 at 1:25am | IP Logged

Just came across this English vocabulary test.
The test is fairly quick, think 2 minutes, and thus less precise. And it seems to be based on a solid scientific foundation (you can read about that on their site in nitty-gritty and faq sections).

Anyway, I decided to share the resource mostly for the additional information this blog provides.
Namely, they flash some cool stats about native speakers and foreign learners knowledge of vocabulary.
It seems they can boast somewhat large numbers of test takers too (I surmised it's around 400k, from their 'unique' results page numbers).

RE: native speakers wrote:

Between the ages of 3 and roughly 16, our vocabulary explodes at an average rate of almost 4 new words a day (3.8, to be more exact). Then, between the ages of 16 and 50, our vocabulary growth is slower, but still fairly consistent: around 1 new word a day (0.85, to be precise). Finally, beyond 50, vocabulary size appears to remain fairly constant.

They also provide a vocabulary size vs age graph and some SAT score related graphs.
On a sad note it seems that vocabulary acquisitions seems to settle down after 50, but really more like 40 given that it's an exponential-looking curve.

RE: foreign learners wrote:

The largest proportion of respondents (4.7%) know 4,500 words (or are in the range from 4,250–4,749, technically).

the median vocabulary size for all respondents is 7,826 — half know more, half know less.

Outside of class is the biggest difference. Students who do "lots" of things in English outside of class have more than twice the vocabulary of those who "don't do much."

Living abroad gets you to and beyond 10,000. every year abroad gives you around 850 more words, or around 2.35 per day.

Some insightful graphs concerning vocabulary and academic performance of foreign language students, presumably not just language classes but overall. Interestingly enough, ~12k is what you need to be the cream of the crop in whatever settings they were measuring, as compared to 6k to get your foot in the door.

Just FYI, their meaning of 'is' is, somewhat strict (meaning your can probably multiply the result by the usual 2.0-2.1 if you wish to count derived word forms), but also not as strict as word families or lexemes, details of course on their stingy methodology subsection and maybe more if they ever publish. Also there's a 10% margin of error.

P.S. For what it's worth I took the test twice (once being generous and another being strict) and got 28900 and 32900, ~30k sounds about right given their choice of counting, my age and their own stats (if I color myself native, which after 10+ years I might as well be).
I'm sure many of you would outstrip me both in the number and in actual skills, I just thought I'd share anyway.
Feel free to brag or not, let's see a battle for the top :) (though I believe their cap is 45k, due to methodology).

Anyway, even if you're bored of vocab counting, of which there's been a few threads here, I thought the other info is worth it.
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tbreit
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Studies: German, Spanish

Message 2 of 7

01 August 2011 at 3:43am | IP Logged

s0fist, you beat me by a bunch, and I thought I was a native speaker. Good job. 27,500 was my score.
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Luai_lashire
Diglot
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luai-lashire.deviant
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Message 3 of 7

01 August 2011 at 2:20pm | IP Logged

I got 35,200 words being strict with myself. It would probably be much higher if I wasn't- there were a number of
words I've seen many times and have a vague understanding of, but I only counted them if I felt I could define them
to someone.
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smallwhite
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Message 4 of 7

01 August 2011 at 2:59pm | IP Logged

s0fist wrote:

On a sad note it seems that vocabulary acquisitions seems to settle down after 50, but really more like 40 given that it's an exponential-looking curve.

I think, in our 20s and 30s, we learn a lot of new things, and thus new words. After 50, we do fewer new things (meeting new friends, taking up new hobbies, etc) (and reading starts to hurt the eyes), and consequently we learn fewer new words. I believe it's not the ability that drops, just the exposure. Just my guess.
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guitarob
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Message 5 of 7

01 August 2011 at 4:26pm | IP Logged

I got 7930 words :(, I am not sure if that's good or bad, but it is certainly interesting to know :D

thanks for the link
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s0fist
Diglot
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United States
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Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French

Message 6 of 7

01 August 2011 at 5:17pm | IP Logged

tbreit wrote:

s0fist, you beat me by a bunch, and I thought I was a native speaker. Good job. 27,500 was my score.

Don't forget the +/- 10% confidence interval, self-evaluation of 'knowing' a word, age, etc... we're probabably closer than you think.

Luai_lashire wrote:

I got 35,200 words being strict with myself. It would probably be much higher if I wasn't- there were a number of words I've seen many times and have a vague understanding of, but I only counted them if I felt I could define them to someone.

Kudos! Another quote from the website:

Nitty-gritty page on the website wrote:

Even though our dictionary contains around 70,000 headwords (and many more derived forms), we were surprised to find only approximately 45,000 of them present in the 100-million-word BNC. It turns out that the rest of the dictionary is mainly either scientific or archaic terms, or rare but easy put-together words like "unrivaled." And the non-put-together words above 35,000 or so are, let us tell you, hard.

Which to me sounds like above 35k one would have to go out of their way to find and retain more and more rare words.

guitarob wrote:

I got 7930 words :(, I am not sure if that's good or bad, but it is certainly interesting to know :D thanks for the link

I think their data indicates that's the typical level for advanced language leaners who hadn't stayed or studied abroad extensively. Here's the quote:

testyourvocab wrote:

Living abroad gets you to and beyond 10,000. Up to one year abroad brings the average student from around 7,000 to around 10,000 words. After that, every year abroad gives you around 850 more words, or around 2.35 per day.

And now for something completely different:

smallwhite wrote:

I agree, I don't think there's any drop or cessation of ability per se. What you list is pretty much what I thought a plausible explanation for the reasons why it stops would be. But it still makes me sad. :)
Being a self-proclaimed philomath I wouldn't want my learning to stop, and most people 40-50-60 y.o. would not attest to having stopped learning and/or might not want it to be the case, but apparently it's true... despite the fact that new words are coined every minute and every year dictionaries get thicker.
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scarlett
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Message 7 of 7

01 August 2011 at 6:23pm | IP Logged

No fair, this native speaker only got 25,900...what?

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