A person's vocabulary level

Mohammed Asad Khan   Sunday, May 12, 2002, 04:39 GMT
Is there any instrument which tells a maximum vocabulary level of a person?
Are there any certain estimations about this?
I read somewhere else, 2000 is for basic level, only for simple conversations.
Atleast 6000 is for university students, and 22,000 for educationsts.
How these levels are estimated?
Who do you think they perform this kinda stuff?

If I ask you both Tom and Michal, what are the levels of yours?
where will you rate yourself?
Tom   Monday, May 13, 2002, 09:01 GMT
You can look at things like the number of definition-word items in your SuperMemo collection. You can also estimate what percentage of words in an English dictionary you can define or translate; then you can multiply that percentage by the total number of entries in the dictionary.

The sheer number of words may not be a good way to measure someone's English skill. What about different meanings of the same word? If I can give one of the definitions of "get", do I know the word "get" or not? What if "get" has 100 meanings?

What about phrases? What about phrasal verbs? Grammar structures? Etc.

I really think it's best to focus on sentences, not words.
Neil Gratton   Monday, May 13, 2002, 09:18 GMT
I agree with Tom, that the number of words known (with no further information) is not a good measure of your English ability.

It's better to see how functional you are in English... for example if you read news online in English (for example at http://news.bbc.co.uk) and you never have to look up a word, then your vocabulary level is obviously excellent for this purpose. If you can't read every word, then you still have some learning to do!

If you really want to get an idea of how many words you know, you could count (preferably using a computer program) the number of unique words in (for example) your e-mail outbox. If you could get an English-native friend to run the same process, then you would get an idea of how your functional vocabulary level compares to theirs!

The number of words you know passively (i.e. can understand in context but would never use) will be both much higher and much more difficult to measure!
Mohammed Asad Khan   Monday, May 13, 2002, 10:28 GMT
Thanks, Both dudes gave me very sound explanations!
All I know for, considering of a vocabulary level is completely bull shit.
What I need to do is to focus on accumulating of correct sentences?
Right, I got you guys!
Miguel   Monday, May 13, 2002, 18:53 GMT
there is not way to know the words you control, however in case there is it is absurd to try to estimate your level by calculating that, as you could know a lot of words but not even being able to talk about simple conversation. It is ridiculous to estimate your english level (which consist of speaking, listening, etc.. ) by knowing english words.
Mohammed Asad Khan   Tuesday, May 14, 2002, 13:53 GMT
I can read this whole website without looking any words in a dictionary.
It's not because of my good vocbulary, It's because of writting the web in the most simplest way. The writers wrote the web by choosing the most feasible words. Neil Gratton, what would you say on your second point in the above para.
don   Friday, June 28, 2002, 00:50 GMT
what is the meaning of dessert
Neil Gratton   Friday, June 28, 2002, 08:21 GMT
Mohammed, regards to your reading of this web site, I would say that your vocabulary level is excellent FOR THE PURPOSES OF READING WEB SITES.

What I mean, is that each person will have tasks they want to be able to complete in English. Some examples might be...
- Buying train tickets
- Reading a newspaper
- Discussing medicine
- Reading English novels in the original language

It is not meaningful to talk about a vocabulary level, without knowing the type of tasks a person wishes to approach. For example, to buy train tickets, you'll probably only need to know a very few words. To discuss medicine, you'll need to know quite a lot of words, but the vocabulary will be predictable (the same (large) set of specialist words will always be used). Novels could use almost any word in the language, so present a special challenge.

As a native English speaker, I would have difficulty discussing medicine because I don't know the specialist vocabulary, on the other hand reading novels (which have a larger vocabulary than medicine) are no problem for me.

So, the true measure of your vocabulary is whether you know enough to operate successfully in the tasks you need to complete in English.
Neil Gratton   Friday, June 28, 2002, 08:25 GMT
don:
a dessert is the sweet dish you eat after the main course of a meal.

"pudding" is (more or less) a synonym of dessert.

For queries like this, you might find the site "http://www.dictionary.com/" useful.
Mohammed Asad Khan   Saturday, June 29, 2002, 12:51 GMT
Neil Gratton, thanks for your help!
I want to ask a few questions via e-mail. Here is my e-mail address:
asad100101@yahoo.com