You hit the nail on the head. There is a huge difference between knowing the general meaning of a word and being able to exactly define them. Simple examples: is a cow a deer? Why (not)?. Is a banana a berry? Is a blueberry a berry? A strawberry?
I used the former because I thought it was what people would do (as it is easier to do; people will not what to spend 30 or more seconds on each word), and got 26600. That is below, but about average. I am not a native speaker, but would have expected to score higher in the general population.
I am fairly sure that this test does not reach the general population, though (by the way, it is nice to see that the test adapts to one's level. Try answering almost none of the words on page 1. I got 'my' score down to 28 by confessing to know only one of the words)
The claims being made on the site that the median score of the whole population is 27k words is not substantiated anywhere else. E.g. http://iteslj.org/Articles/Cervatiuc-VocabularyAcquisition.h..., which references 'proper' studies (but I haven't tracked the references), says
"Based on previous research, Nation and Waring (1997) estimate that the receptive vocabulary size of a university-educated native English speaker is around 20,000 base words, while Goulden, Nation, and Read's (1990) intervention indicates that the receptive vocabulary size range of college-educated native English speakers is 13,200 - 20,700 base words (Goulden, Nation, & Read, 1990), with an average of 17,200 base words."
I'm a non-native speaker and got 18 700 words, which I found rather disappointing when I read that that was, according to the site, roughly equivalent to (or even below) the average 15 year old native speaker. Thinking a bit about it however I'm quite sure that that is nonsense - I am regularly asked by native speakers to review their English texts and scholarly articles and am relatively often commented on my broad vocabulary. When people review mine and I push them on why they suggested certain grammatical or stylistic changes, almost invariably it turns out that they are influenced by personal style preferences or local customs (as in, local to the area they grew up in). Now I'm not God's gift to the world and I'm sure that there is much to be improved on my English, but still I'm quite sure I can outperform the 5th percentile of the general population on English vocabulary knowledge. (I mean - that's people with an iq of 80 or less ffs, again not to say that I'm a genius but I find the proposition that I would score worse than most native speakers that qualify under many definitions as mentally retarded to be preposterous).
I'm highly skeptical of the site's claim that the 50% percentile knows 27k words. It seems to be from their own test takers, and I didn't find any references to other researcher's results, of which there are several.
Speaking of animals, how is names of plants and animals counted? Is that part of a vocabulary, or is that special?
I'm also not a native English speaker, and one area where I know there's a huge difference between my Swedish vocabulary and my English is when it comes to names of plants and birds and spices and animals and trees and fish and rocks and flowers and vegetables and fruits. I know maybe thousands of names of such things in Swedish, but in English I know much fewer names. That's a few thousand words I lack and probably will never learn because it's so specialized.
(Btw, bananas are berries, but cows are not deers. :) )
> (Btw, bananas are berries, but cows are not deers. :) )
Not sure if you're joking or not, but to be clear to non-native speakers: bananas are definitely not berries. Berries are smaller and rounder. For example: blueberries, raspberries, blackberries. I guess strawberries, too, but they're outliers.
Bananas ARE berries, so are watermelons and tomatoes. But strawberries and raspberries are not berries.
Berries have seeds on the inside; a strawberry's seeds are on the outside, and raspberries are little clusters they are called something else. It's a famous quiz question in the UK :)
It depends, of course, if you're talking as a botanist or as a cook. It's one of those words with multiple levels of truth.
Same with tomato - it's a fruit botanically, but in culinary terms it's a vegetable and definitely not a fruit. As long as you get your context right, you won't have problems communicating :)
I used the former because I thought it was what people would do (as it is easier to do; people will not what to spend 30 or more seconds on each word), and got 26600. That is below, but about average. I am not a native speaker, but would have expected to score higher in the general population.
I am fairly sure that this test does not reach the general population, though (by the way, it is nice to see that the test adapts to one's level. Try answering almost none of the words on page 1. I got 'my' score down to 28 by confessing to know only one of the words)