What does the test measure exactly?
The test measures receptive vocabulary — the number of words you recognize in reading and listening. This reflects the range and depth of topics you can understand. Receptive vocabulary is usually several times larger than productive vocabulary, the words you actively use in speech or writing.
What counts as a word?
The test reports results in word families. For example: limit, limitation, limitations, limited, limiting, limitless, limitlessly, limits, and unlimited all count as one word family.
How many words are there in English?
In the test, the highest possible score is based on a database of 25,000 word families, but this is by no means a complete list.
How can the test work with only a few dozen questions?
This is the magic of advanced statistics and modern techniques of computerized adaptive testing. You can read more on innerworkings of the test.
Is there more information about how others score?
You can explore detailed results from more than 220,000 native and non-native speakers.
What should I do if my result reliability is low?
Take the test again. The more carefully you mark only the words you truly know, the more reliable your result will be.
