Your Vocabulary

[Rangeet]

Just popping in to say that if anyone here finds a better vocabulary test you should probably link it.

[Emp]

Maybe reading people’s PASBL reffings and other RP posts is a bad indicator, but I’m shocked at how high a few member’s scores are. Although I guess your vocabulary range doesn’t necessarily correlate with your quality of writing.

This isn’t meant to be a jab at anyone.

[Talon87]

http://www.vocaboly.com/vocabulary-test/ has a lot of sample tests of some famous standardized tests.

Select Meaning By Word: http://www.vocaboly.com/vocabulary-test/gre40.php
Select Word By Meaning: http://www.vocaboly.com/vocabulary-test/gre401.php
This isn't how I did it on the computer, but I imagine this is what the written GRE would be like. (The computerized version of the test submits you to a system like what I described in an earlier post.) Anyway ...

Got 40/40 on the first one. May take the second one later. Right now I need to do some other things. (FYI, this test has some weaknesses too. For example, hell if I knew ...

Spoiler: show

what a philatelist was, but the fact that stamp-collector was the only noun to choose from made that an easy pick. Even had they listed another noun, I'd have probably still gone with the stamp collector 'cause it was just so weird. )

[Rangeet]

83% on the first one, 88% on the second.

[phoopes]

27,400 words. Some of them completely baffled me, like wiwaww, or whatever it was. Then again, I do know some obscure words that happened to appear on the test, so that did help my score out.

Didn't take either of Talon's tests, though.

[Concept]

Originally Posted by empoleon dynamite

Maybe reading people’s PASBL reffings and other RP posts is a bad indicator, but I’m shocked at how high a few member’s scores are. Although I guess your vocabulary range doesn’t necessarily correlate with your quality of writing.

This isn’t meant to be a jab at anyone.

My reffings aren't particularly well written but that's more a combination of struggling with good sentence structure and being a bit lazy with description (the legend battle I reffed is noticeably better on the latter front because I put effort in, but still not nearly as interesting or well written as people like Elsie's reffings). S'more sentence structure issues than vocab.

When writing I find myself in one of two situations - either I know exactly what I want to communicate, in which case I'm fairly concise and kinda dry, or I don't, in which case I ramble uninterestingly. Not one of my strong suits.

EDIT the first: Full marks on Talon's first test (there was one I guessed but it was something-ist and there was only one noun definition, so call it 39/40). 90% in the second.

[Amras.MG]

There's also the issue that this is a Pokemon forum, and is therefore a leisurely hobby. The way I talk on UPN is way more relaxed than any sort of scholarly things I do, because if I wanted to do scholarly things... I'd do those, rather than talk to a bunch of like-minded nerds.

[takkupanda]

Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek

28,100.

I feel disappointed about this.

Are you effing kidding me?... I tried it once and I got 15,700. I thought maybe it was a statistical unlucky outcome so I tried it again and got 15,000.

[Char]

38,200

I don't use a wide range of words in my everyday conversation/writing though. I like to keep it as simple usually.

[Shuckle]

Originally Posted by Talon87

Oh fuck off. I agree it's a general range -- I also agree it's a poorly-designed test of true vocabulary competency -- but even had you scored 29,999 you wouldn't have deserved to place yourself in the 30,000 to 35,000 range.

ok so maybe i was a little butthurt that i was so close but not an even number

but remember the test does underscore you a bit for the reasons you stated and the reasons i stated too. so someone with 24,500 is probably actually above the 25,000 range, someone with 34,500 is probably actually actually in the 35,000+ range.

that was my thought process, sorry for not clarifying earlier. if whatsisname had scored right around where i was then i most certainly he would be in the 30,000-35,000 range. TDos, if he had scored 24,100 or whatever, would definitely have bumped up a bracket.

also, scientific/technical vocabulary is not a forte for me. so the test is a little bit skewed. ever so slightly.

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by Shuckle

ok so maybe i was a little butthurt that i was so close but not an even number
[...]

also, scientific/technical vocabulary is not a forte for me. so the test is a little bit skewed. ever so slightly.

Yes: skewed in your favor. Like we keep saying, this test had barely any scientific terminology at all. You can't very well expect us to take you seriously when you try to twist this agreed-upon fact to mean that "oh, woe is me, if only there had been even fewer science terms on there I'd have done even better! " lololololol. What about Dave, Concept, myself, and many of the others here? If the absence of the fewer than 5% scientific terms on this exam would've boosted your score marginally from 29k to 30k or 31k, the proportionate presence of them -- something like 50% of the English language -- would have decimated your score relative to ours. Where were the words like varices, scabies, maculopapular, and oligodendrocyte? Where were the words like cuvette, micropipette, and stethoscope? Where were the words like paleolithic, neolithic, and australopithecine? Where were the words like chelation, saponification, and hydrolysis? To say nothing of proper nouns like Erlenmeyer (flask) or Grignard (reagent) or Apgar (score).

What you've demonstrated here is the frustration inherent with grading scales which use large ranges. When I graduated from college, a 90 to 100 was a hard A (no minuses or pluses), an 80 to an 89.999...999 was a B, and so on. So if you got, say, an 89.997, then congratulations: on the report card, your grade was reported as a B and as far as employers could appreciate (from your GPA) you scored an estimated 10 percentage points lower than students who scored a 90.000...001 in that same course. The university no longer does this but it did when I graduated. Needless to say, the system was not popular with students who tended to find themselves to the left of grade cutoffs but was quite popular with those who tended to find themselves to the right of such cutoffs. (After all, if an 80.01 looks just as good to an employer as an 89.99, it meant the student could horse around a lot more on the weekends and still get the same rewards as the 89.99 guy at the end of the semester.) With this test, you were Mr. 89.9%. Congratulations. It's a great grade ... but it's a B. You don't get to say "it's almost an A, therefore we're going to count it as an A " and expect us to take that seriously.

[Lonely Cubone]

Adding a smiley face does not needless jerkery excuse. Lay off him a bit.

Your second paragraph is a constant frustration for degrees in the UK as well.

[Amras.MG]

I noticed a great lack of specialty words, as well. I didn't really have to draw on any of my history or philosophy training; most of the words I knew on that list were either standard or from reading fantasy books.

[Lonely Cubone]

There was a fair bit of specialist literature terminology (well, words that have just fallen out of modern usage so would be biased towards those who read classic fiction heavily) but not much else.

Mind you, I'm a business student and I think most of the wanky business terminology should not be allowed to enter the dictionary.

[kusari]

31,000. The fuck? Seems too high, actually. Expected somewhere in the 20,000s because I see myself as retarded.

[Amras.MG]

I guess that's how I ended up doing reasonably well then. I noticed a lot of more British-y words and some really random crap, and then a bunch of fantasy/classic fiction words, and then actual human words.

[JustAnotherUser]

Originally Posted by Rangeetsuper

22,200 ;;

I'll go cry in a corner now

My situation to the letter.

[Princess Ana]

Originally Posted by Talon87

http://www.vocaboly.com/vocabulary-test/ has a lot of sample tests of some famous standardized tests.

Select Meaning By Word: http://www.vocaboly.com/vocabulary-test/gre40.php
Select Word By Meaning: http://www.vocaboly.com/vocabulary-test/gre401.php
This isn't how I did it on the computer, but I imagine this is what the written GRE would be like. (The computerized version of the test submits you to a system like what I described in an earlier post.) Anyway ...

Got 40/40 on the first one. May take the second one later. Right now I need to do some other things. (FYI, this test has some weaknesses too. For example, hell if I knew ...

Spoiler: show

what a philatelist was, but the fact that stamp-collector was the only noun to choose from made that an easy pick. Even had they listed another noun, I'd have probably still gone with the stamp collector 'cause it was just so weird. )

On each of those tests, I scored a 35 out of 40. This makes me fell better than the lest test(21,800 words), but I am in 12th grade. What can I be expected to know? :P

[Amras.MG]

Looks like I got 98/100 on Talon's first test.

95/100 on the second one.

[Shuckle]

I keep saying the score doesn't really matter ;_; A grade follows you for the rest of your life. I explained why I thought the score was bumped down a little, so there's no need to bring out the bullwhip and say "NO! ".

Honestly, most of the points in your post took the points in mine in a radically different direction (as you and unownmew both are wont to do occasionally) and I don't want to get into an argument so I'll just leave it be.

Besides, there's nothing I can do about it now.

[lilboocorsola]

22,100 words. >_> So hard not to click on the words I've seen but aren't sure of. "Have you ever seen a quetzal in a williwaw?" =3=

Got 100 on Talon's first test. Admittedly the spoiler helped with one (Yes, yes, bad Blue for clicking beforehand), though ironically the book the above quote is from also taught me that. =x Sorta.

93 on the second one. #39 was kinda screwy though, thought it was a mistake. =/

[deoxys]

28,200.

Meh.

[unownmew]

21,800 words, here. I did not click on any words I could not strictly define though. Some others I recognized, and others I could generally understand but could not put the definition in words, but I didn't try to cheat up my score.

Other words were just straight up weird...

Will take Talon's Tests now.

Edit:
Test 1: 98/100 I missed Analgesic. #13 Parley, I blame Pirates of the Caribbean for teaching me the word. :3
Test 2: 95/100 I missed "Criticize Harshly" and "not naive/Sophisticated". In my defense, for the latter it was a toss-up between 2, and I used test-taking strategy to choose.
I also blame Pirate of the Carribean for teaching me "Miscreant" :3

[Mercutio]

30,700. Not bad? I dunno lol, I didn't do a natural sciences degree but then I can talk about consociational pillarisation for hours.

Originally Posted by Lonely Cubone

I suspect anyone with a specialist degree like yours Dave would actually be a bit higher as you probably know an awful lot of very specific technical terms that aren't really covered by a test like this.

Yeah this.

Fairly silly test, but very fun. Anyone comparing scores, incidentally, would be wise to note that not everyone here is native English speaking (Tdos and Rangeet, shut up :p ) and that there are some wildly fluctuating ages and backgrounds here.

[Jerichi]

31800 on the test posted in the OP.

Language is kind of what I do so a good vocabulary is a must.

Also I just like words.