School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies Te Kura Tātari Reo

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Vocabulary tests

Download tests that measure vocabulary size and knowledge of words at different frequency levels.

There are three kinds of vocabulary proficiency tests on this page:

  • The Vocabulary Size Test measures total vocabulary size (i.e., how many words someone knows).
  • The Vocabulary Levels Test measures knowledge of particular frequency levels of words (e.g., the first 1,000 and second 1,000 words).
  • The 1,000 and 2,000 level tests are based on Michael West's A General Service List of English Words. They are useful for testing low-proficiency learners, and the bilingual versions make sure that the learners do not have to struggle with English definitions.

The Vocabulary Size Test covers 20,000 word families and can be used with native speakers and advanced non-native speakers. The 14,000 version is best used with only advanced non-native speakers or native speakers under 12 years old. There are some bilingual versions of the tests and these should be preferred ahead of monolingual versions, especially for lower proficiency learners.

The Vocabulary Levels Test should be used with learners of English as a foreign language who know less than 5,000 words. The vocabulary size test is not suitable for such learners.

The Vocabulary Size Test

The Vocabulary Size Test measures how many words someone knows, the total size of their vocabulary. Online vocabulary size tests are available at VocabularySize.com and Compleat Lexical Tutor.

The Vocabulary Levels Test

The Vocabulary Levels Test measures knowledge of particular frequency levels of words (e.g., the first 1,000 and second 1,000 words). It is the most suitable test for measuring the vocabulary size and vocabulary knowledge of elementary and intermediate learners of English as a foreign language.

There are two recent versions of the test and these are the best one to use: the Updated Vocabulary Levels Test and the New Vocabulary Levels Test. They are listed here along with the articles describing them.

The first and second 1,000 words bilingual tests

The following bilingual tests test the first 1,000 and 2,000 words of English according to Michael West’s A General Service List of English Words. The test guide files contain the correct answers and can be used to make new version in other languages.