Test your vocab: The Blog

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New survey questions

28 July 2011

Participation has continued to build far beyond our expectations, with over a third of a million unique visitors to the site (and, interestingly, almost everybody who visits takes the test). We realize the potential for collecting more detailed data, and have received lots of suggestions from participants as well. So today we've added several additional survey questions which will hopefully allow us to produce more interesting results:

• Reading. For native speakers, how much do you read? And how much do you read fiction? It's commonly believed that reading is the principal mechanism for adult vocabulary growth. Is this true? And how much does it depend on fictional literature?
• Nationality. We've been tracking English-speaking nationality explicitly, and non-native nationality by IP address, but now we're including a full list of countries for non-native speakers, so that we can be sure any country comparisons we perform are accurate.
• Reading, writing, listening, speaking. For non-native learners, we've had an overall question about English usage English outside class. We're keeping that question, but now including additional breakdown questions by skill. How are they ranked in terms of effect on vocabulary?
• TOEFL and IELTS. We've already been recording SAT scores for US participants. Now we're recording TOEFL (both paper-based and Internet-based) and IELTS scores for non-native learners, along with when the exams were taken.

We're looking forward to being able to publish new findings here. So thanks to everyone who's participated so far, and please keep spreading the word!