April 15, 2007, 11:49
shufitzVocabulary Quiz
From the paper:
You can now take a test to estimate the size of your vocabulary at www.plenilune.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/vocabulary.asp.
Don't be discouraged by such early test words as dioecious, amphoprotic and apoidea.
You will soon be hitting such words as ostiarius and parthenocissus.
And, also, rehearsal and sternly, thank God.
A British site, unsurprisingly.

April 17, 2007, 20:47
KallehInteresting. I noticed that some words or phrases occurred twice, and I wondered if they were evaluating reliability. Sometimes I waivered between "inferred" and "familiar." I found the genus and species words hard; were they really familiar? Or were they just inferred?
April 18, 2007, 08:33
missannCute test of dubious value. If you take obscure words from a specialty, like biology, you seriously bias the test. I got a score of 116,217. Is that good or bad?
April 18, 2007, 14:14
SeanahanI got around 117,000, but I think that number is, to put it bluntly, crap. Many of the words were persons names who I'd never heard of, or random genera/phyla which only a biologist would know. Still, not knowing any of those, the number seems to be high.
April 18, 2007, 15:15
shufitzBritish bias. I saw several words that would be more familiar to a Brit than to a USn (
Northumbia is the only one I recall), and the UK spelling of
flavour.
April 18, 2007, 19:57
KallehI think my score was around 113,000, but I also found it quite useless. The scientific words alone took up way too many of the words. I also think it unreliable just to have to say, "I understand the word."