5 ms·
19,600. I'm willing to accept this, although I'm not going to lie -- I'm very upset at myself. I'm used to scoring 99th percentile in every standardized test;
by natural219 15y ago
19,600. I'm willing to accept this, although I'm not going to lie -- I'm very upset at myself. I'm used to scoring 99th percentile in every standardized test; it's kind of a shock to realize that I'm nowhere near the median of even my age group, let alone the general populace (I'm 20).
That said, I'm currently reading A Dance with Dragons and there are tons of words in this series (A Song of Ice and Fire) that I'm not familiar with. Most of the ones I missed are words I recognize from this series, although since I'm not 100% sure of them, so I left them unchecked.
- AdamTReineke 15y agoI'm 22 came in at 19.5k. I guess I need to use the dictionary in my Kindle a lot more.
- RobertLowe 15y agoI'm 23, I took this thing half awake and came in at 24k. I'm not an avid reader. The test seems to pull random words from a dictionary and not words used in a general mannor. Not only that but it messed all the delicious skill-trade grammar I know and love. Bollocks.
- white_devil 15y agoWould you have checked the word "manner"?
- StavrosK 15y agoOr "manor"?
- smallblacksun 15y agoor "messed"?
- The_Fox 15y agoPerhaps the results of this test don't predict academic success very well. I graduated at the top of my program (of about 30 graduates) last year and scored only 20.5k. Maybe I fell behind my peers by only reading comp sci, math, business, and communications related stuff for 4 years. Guess I've got some catching up to do.
- acangiano 15y agoI was a bit disappointed with 23,700, but it appears to be good for a non-native speaker. My wife, a native English speaker, virtually lapped me at 42,600 words. :)
- evandijk70 15y agoThis makes me feel a lot better about my 15500 as someone from Holland who has been studying in England for 4 months.
- Willwhatley 15y agoHowdy, I scored a little over 40k on this, and did well on other verbal tests for the general population when I was still taking tests. I attribute much of my facility to 1)reading fantasy and 2)looking up words I don't know. Since I loathe interrupting the flow of a story, I read with a pencil and make a list of words to batch learning later. Best,
- lurker14 15y agoI filled pages of word lists while reading Cryptonomicon. It was amazing.
- panorama 15y ago22,300 as an American 22 year-old. I write and read slightly moreso than most people too (though nothing too formal or high-academia). I also thought I had an unfair advantage early on because I knew a lot of words from playing Blizzard games all my life. Sorely disappointed :(.
- meric 15y agoDon't be upset, I got 19,700. Using big words make a good communicator not. The point of using a language is to communicate. Using esoteric words only a fraction of the population knows defeats this purpose. If anything, given the same amount of practice but with a smaller vocabulary will make you a better communicator, IMHO.
- tentonwire 15y agoI don't think this is very accurate. I scored 95+% on both SAT and GRE verbal, and I only got a 27,400. I imagine there are quite a few test takers who are not completely honest with themselves.
- officemonkey 15y agoGRRM tends to use a bunch of unusual words pretty frequently: "dandle", "garron", "palfrey", "hauberk", "solar".
- liedra 15y agoI thought in aDwD that "leal" was just yet another Kindle OCR mess-up for "loyal" until I found out it actually really is a word - an old English word for "loyal"! Goes to show... something, I guess! :)
- officemonkey 15y agoThat's why I really like reading with the Kindle app. The dictionary is only a tap away. I'm now in the habit of looking up every word I don't know.
- blaenk 15y agoAlso, leal means loyal in spanish, that's how I knew, when I was reading that book :)
- lhnz 15y ago20.7K myself and I'm 24 from the UK. I think the test is a little harsh or doesn't really mean what people would think. On the second group of words, half of those words aren't in popular use any more -- it's almost like a lesson in history.
- marcinw 15y agoI must admit, as an American male, a little older than you, my score was also so low, I'm too embarrassed to even mention. All those years of cheating on vocabulary tests (merely by memorizing the words 5 minutes prior to taking the test) in high school did not help. It's one of the those things I look back on in life and regret. Does anyone have any suggestions on ways to catch up ? edit: forgot to mention, while I am a native English speaker, both my parents tend to speak Polish most of the time, while I always reply in English. I have to wonder how much this had an affect on me.
- georgieporgie 15y agoRead a lot. In fact, buy a Kindle and read a lot. It has a built-in dictionary which is quite decent, and you'll actually look up words that you would otherwise skim past with a mediocre context-based understanding.