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Disappointed about English vocab test | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| H.Computatralis Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6094 days ago 130 posts - 210 votes  Speaks: Polish*, French, English Studies: German, Spanish, Latin | Message 33 of 69 21 October 2011 at 10:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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To all those who did the tests I just wanted to say that I find the second test at testyourvocab.com much better than the first one despite not testing your knowledge of the words. In the first one there are international words like "demography" and "deficit" or scientific terms like "erythrocyte", which should not be used to determine English vocabulary size IMO.
If you read the FAQ for the second test you'll find that besides avoiding the technical words they specifically avoided many Romance cognates and any words that could possibly be confused for other words so people don't click words they think they know. The two step process also allows them to narrow the test to the most appropriate vocabulary range. Overall the test seems to have been designed much more carefully than the first one. It also takes much less time. ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5016 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 34 of 69 22 October 2011 at 2:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think scientific terms should be disregarded. As someone with a scientific education background, my vocabulary tends to broader in that area regardless of language, or being a native or a foreign speaker. Other than that, I completely agree.
BTW, the words appearing on both parts of the test are somewhat random, so you can take it multiple times. I've been getting slightly different 'scores', all within the 25,000 - 30,000 words range, so it seems consistent. Just remember NOT to fill in your demographical data more than once if you do it too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| palfrey Senior Member Canada Joined 5063 days ago 81 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 35 of 69 22 October 2011 at 4:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Btw, there is another method of estimating vocabulary size that does not need computers, and was used over a century ago, according to some books I have read. Take a large unabridged dictionary of the language, and select a fairly large number of pages at random, e.g., 50 or so pages. Check how many of the words on these pages you know. (You'll have to judge for yourself whether the word is part of your active or passive vocabulary.) From there, you can work out a proportion, and hence an estimate of how many words you would know in the entire dictionary.
Now it is true, that similar words often appear clustered together on a page, e.g., nation, national, nationality. It is likely that you either know most of the words in such a cluster, or none of them. So this may not be perfect as a statistical sample -- we should really try to choose each word independently of any other words that have been chosen in the sample. But that would be rather time-consuming, and this method can still give a decent esimate of your vocabulary size. And I suppose you could repeat the experiment a few times, and see how closely the estimates agree. Of course, if you have the time and patience, you could work through the entire dictionary, cover to cover, and avoid this statistical uncertainty. But that could take several weeks, if not longer. Anyways, thought I would mention it. It is one of those things that sounds extremely obvious once it is pointed out, and yet many people would not think of it. (And to be honest, I probably would not have thought of it either.) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| H.Computatralis Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6094 days ago 130 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Polish*, French, English Studies: German, Spanish, Latin | Message 36 of 69 22 October 2011 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | ||
That's exactly my point. The value of a test like this should be to evaluate your mastery of the English vocabulary not of your knowledge in any specific field. I am sure I know many words in my field of specialty that most, even highly educated, native speakers would not know. A foreign medical student who barely speaks any English would probably know what "erythrocyte" means yet an English literature professor might conceivably not know it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5016 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 37 of 69 22 October 2011 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | ||
The big problem with this is that any field-specific terms is regarded as 'not part of English vocabulary', which in itself is a most hairy statement. Just how specific can a term be before it is disregarded? Education in any field is bound to bias your vocabulary towards it no matter what. A perfectly balanced knowledge of terms implies the same level of education in all areas, which is soon unsustainable unless you remain completely uneducated. I -a non-biologist- once asked an English biologist if the English word for the "fan" at the end of shrimp-like crustaceans bodies was by any chance 'telson'. Turns out it is, but he didn't know the term. Is it English? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5556 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 38 of 69 22 October 2011 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | ||
That's not the issue, the real problem is that most non-native speakers with an acceptable grasp of the English language will have a good knowledge of scientific terms of their own field, but lack higher frequency everyday vocabulary as well as terms of other fields of trade. That makes those words bad indicators when measuring an individual's mastery of vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5016 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 39 of 69 23 October 2011 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||
Yes and no. The real problem is that 'frequencies of use' are different for everyone, including native speakers, and any kind of 'global frequency of use' is necessarily a function of the actual group of individuals / texts that are taken into account for the calculation. OTOH, I don't think a great difference in these frequencies can be expected if you take two individuals with similar personal + work profiles, and one is a native while the other one is a well adapted foreigner. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dongsen Newbie Taiwan Joined 4599 days ago 30 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English | Message 40 of 69 23 October 2011 at 4:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I took the test and was a little surprised to rate under a native speaker 19,600, apparently native speaker is
20,000 words. Especially given I have lived in Australia for 30 years, was known as a book worm by most of my friends, and have a university degree. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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