20 Important Facts about Vocabulary Tests you need to Know

A vocabulary test is part of IQ tests where the test taker is required to define words of different levels of difficulty in a way the assessor can screen their intellectual ability and achievement.

In this test, your knowledge of vocabulary is thoroughly evaluated based on the number of words that you will identify and you may have to know their meanings and also the situation where they might be used.

There is a variety of complexity of the words included in the tests based on their fairness and severity. But that actually depends on the area in which the test specializes.

Universities use vocabulary tests to give candidates admission likewise business organizations that utilize the test as part of their assessment centers for selecting the right candidate for a specific role.

20 Important Facts about Vocabulary Tests you need to Know

Here are important facts you need to know about vocabulary tests:

1. What is vocabulary test?

A vocabulary test is used to measure a candidate’s understanding of the meaning of a selection of words.

Questions come in the form of a quiz to assess the depth and width of vocabulary that an individual may have.

A vocabulary test is typically used by organizations as part of the recruitment processes to help discover the level of intelligence of prospective employees.

In schools and universities, vocabulary tests are used as part of the educational program to render assistance in the improvement of students’ grammar.

You can create hundreds of tests for students at all levels to complete in the classroom or remotely with an easy-to-use vocabulary test maker like FlexiQuiz.

2. Types of vocabulary tests

In order to understand the candidates’ knowledge of words, phrases, synonyms, and antonyms, different types of vocabulary tests can be utilized.

Some of the categories of tests that can be created with FlexiQuiz have been analyzed in this section. These include:

i. Matching words with images

This type of question requires that you relate images to the correct word. This can be achieved through:

• Displaying a mixture of pictures and words and requiring that students match the correct image to the pertinent term.
• Sharing a word or phrase and requiring that students match this against a choice of images.

ii. Matching the word with the definitions

A word is shared that features several definitions or synonyms of which one is accurate.

You can create this question using the single-choice or multiple-choice question types.

iii. Identification

A major word with three answer choices is shown and students are asked to correctly identify which is a synonym, antonym, or is irrelevant.

The examiner would use the fill-in-the-blank type of question to create this.

iv. Open-ended questions

A word can be shared and students are asked to write a definition or synonym for the term.

This question can be created using the essay type of question but could be marked manually.

v. Fill the gaps

You will experience this question in the form of a sentence in which you will be asked to guess the missing word accurately.

This question can be created using fill-in-the-blanks or matching text.

Students will be required to spell the word correctly based on the answer options that are provided.

You may rather create multiple-choice questions where students can choose from an alternative of words.

vi. Odd one out

Students are provided with a selection of words or phrases, and they are asked to accurately identify which one is not part of the group.

The single-choice type of question can be used to create this category of question.

3. Is a vocabulary test a pre-employment assessment tool?

Organizations use vocabulary tests to foresee the candidate’s ability to communicate well and generate new ideas.

The meaning of vocabulary is a person’s verbal knowledge and logical connection with other words.

Education and life experience are two good ways through which people build their vocabulary.

Vocabulary mirrors the depth and breadth of your accumulated knowledge of a society and culture.

4. Why is vocabulary linked to job proficiency?

There is a relationship between vocabulary and job efficiency since it is required for successful communication and problem-solving.

• Communication

Significant vocabularies are often associated with great oral and written communication.

Communications influence an individual’s ability to understand colleagues and be understood in the workplace, which consequently affects teamwork and task performance.

• Problem-solving

A big vocabulary improves your problem-solving at work. A place of work is where you need to utilize your functioning memory to process new information and come up with solutions.

Varieties of words stored in our long-term memory are used as concepts to reduce the number of items we have to analyze and allow us to focus our functioning memory on a deeper understanding of the original information.

5. What effect does your vocabulary have in your place of work?

A good vocabulary is required in almost every role you can think of. Here is a list of jobs wherein vocabulary is imperative for general performance.

• Leadership roles

Employees in this role need the ability to understand and balance the desires of their team and the needs of the business to effect change.

• Sales representative

This group of employees needs the ability to listen to understand the needs of the prospects and design a message that will reverberate.

• Technical writers

This particular set of individuals should understand multiple technical concepts so they can write clearly about them and in a manner that others will emulate.

• Social workers

These employees should be able to listen and ask relevant questions to understand the client’s circumstances so they can devise the best solutions.

• Personnel recruiters

This job force requires the ability to communicate job requirements in a useful mode so that they can hire the right workers.

• Health specialists

Those working in this job sector require the ability to communicate clearly and effectively with colleagues and patients.

6. Advantages of creating an online vocabulary test

It’s easy to create entertaining and engaging tests for students of all ages and abilities using a variety of online tests.

As part of home working or homeschooling, tests can be taken remotely on any device.

Through a range of FlexiQuiz features like question banks, time limits, maximize quiz attempts, and lots more, tests can spot the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses.

Finally, your tests will be automatically marked and scored to save you time, apart from essays and file-upload questions. You will have the chance to rest, too.

7. How to craft an online vocabulary quiz or test

Firstly, select a vocabulary quiz maker such as FlexiQuiz and create or login to your FlexiQuiz account.

Secondly, choose to create a quiz and enter a quiz name from the main dashboard. And then select to add a Welcome screen or move straight to the questions.

You need to also add your questions with the related question type and see the suggestions displayed.

You will then configure the test with background themes, logos, progress bars, time limits, etc. of your choice.

In the end, you will need to publish and share your online quiz and FlexiQuiz will score any completed tests automatically.

The results of your participants will be tracked in real-time and shown on your ‘analyze screen’.

8. Tips to pass vocabulary tests

Here are valuable tips you can follow to build self-confidence and also prepare for the vocabulary tests:

• Study numerous literature materials and texts
• Find context of new words
• Learn synonyms and antonyms
• Learn root-words prefixes and suffixes
• Learn tricks and memorization techniques
• Look for words that might have a relationship with Job spheres
• Study frequently used words in Vocabulary Tests
• Practice regularly.

9. Assessment-training vocabulary test packs

Assessment-training offers online vocabulary test practice to help you practice the test.

The vocabulary test pack mimics the tests used by employers to fully prepare you for your assessment.

The test was developed by professionals with years of experience in the field of occupational psychology.

The practice platform makes use of leading-edge technology and gives you feedback on your scores in the form of test history, progress, and performance in relation to your norm group.

These vocabulary test packs are designed to help you practice so as to get yourself familiarized with the test formats and work on your accuracy and experience performing under time pressure.

10. The vocabulary size test

This test measures the knowledge an individual has for words. The test is used to assess the full size of the person’s vocabulary, covering 20,000-word families, and can be utilized with native speakers and advanced non-native speakers.

The 14,000 versions are used in the most excellent way with only native speakers under 12 years old and advanced non-native speakers.

People prefer the bilingual versions of the tests to a monolingual version, especially for lower proficiency learners.

The online vocabulary size tests are obtainable at Compleat Lexical Tutor and VocabularySize.

11. The vocabulary levels test

This test assesses the knowledge of particular frequency levels of words such as the first 1,000 and second 1,000 words.

It’s the most appropriate test for evaluating the vocabulary size and vocabulary knowledge of elementary and midway learners of English as a foreign language.

The vocabulary levels test is used instead of the vocabulary size test that is not appropriate for learners of English that know less than 5,000 words.

12. Vocabulary question types and modes

There are ten various question categories of vocabulary tests, including:

• Synonym
• Antonym
• Definition
• Sentence Definition
• Sentence Synonym
• Polysemous Sentence Synonym
• Image
• Fill in the Blank
• Apply the Meaning
• Spelling.

13. The vocabulary tests question modes

Every question you behold will also be offered in a certain question mode. The question mode has a role to play in how your answer is counted towards your general mastery of the word.

Additionally, question modes (assessment, review, progress, and brush-up) determine how many points you will be rewarded if you get it correctly.

14. Background vocabulary

Background vocabulary is the words found in a language that contain single items and phrases or masses of several words that show a specific meaning in the manner someone’s words do.

In today’s growing utilization of communicative means where students’ inability to make known what they need to say was caused by a limitation of vocabulary, the teaching of vocabulary should take precedence over the teaching of grammar.

Now that the importance of vocabulary in language teaching has been emphasized, the ability to test vocabulary should be developed.

15. Aspects of vocabulary testing

The main aspect of vocabulary is to assess the size of a student’s breadth of knowledge or measure how well the student’s depth of knowledge is identified.

Usually, the classroom vocabulary achievement assessment attempts to measure how many words students know from the subset of words they learned.

However, in order to maintain fluency, one must know more than just the meaning of a word.

There are eight categories of native-speaker word knowledge, including:

i. Knowledge of the meaning of a word (for example, the synonym of ‘pretty’ is ‘beautiful’)
ii. Spoken form (knowing the pronunciation and spelling of a word)
iii. Written form ( putting down the pronounced word on paper)
iv. Grammatical patterns (this comes in part-of-speech and copied forms)
v. Collocations (other words that naturally come about mutually with the targeted word in the text)
vi. Frequency
vii. Associations (the relationship in the meaning of words)
viii. Stylistic restrictions (this involves levels of formality and regional variation).

16. What are the impacts that contexts have on vocabulary testing?

Research is crafted to inspect what influence that zero context and sentence context have on vocabulary testing and how the subjects’ performance is affected by the various types of context in vocabulary.

The result of the experimentation shows that sentence takes a major part in assisting the individual to figure out the correct meaning or target words.

17. The significance of vocabulary testing in language testing

Vocabulary is significantly noticed in the entire system of language and is one of the three elements in a language.

Words are used in language construction as units of meaning from which bigger structures like sentences, paragraphs, and the entire texts are formed.

Without words nothing can be expressed just as little can be expressed without grammar, as often said.

Vocabulary is essential that both teachers and learners spend much time and money on vocabulary acquisition.

We can have an idea of how much importance is attached to vocabulary from the numerous vocabulary textbooks found in bookstores and libraries.

Vocabulary testing has also been influenced by the development of linguistic theories as an important part of language testing.

18. What can be tested within vocabulary?

There are two general methods to finding out how well words are recognized. These include a development method and a dimensions approach.

The developmental approach attempts to ultimately discover the development knowledge of a word, typically by means of the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS); while the dimensions approach tries to display a list of all the proficiencies essential for using a word in a native-like way.

19. In what ways is vocabulary tested?

Vocabulary can be typically tested through multiple-choice items, associated words, matching items, word formation test items, items involving synonyms, rearrangement items, completion items, etc.

Each category of testing has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Multiple-choice items are chosen in the most public testing because of their impartiality and the convenience of scoring.

Despite the technique implemented, vocabulary-testing items can be divided into context-independent items and context-dependent items (when the context is involved).

• A context-independent vocabulary test

This presents words to the test-takers in seclusion and asks them to choose meanings for the words without referring to any linguistic context.

• A context-dependent vocabulary test

This test is designed to measure the ability of the test-taker to take account of contextual information so as to produce the anticipated response.

The context in the context-dependent vocabulary test could mean passages or sentences.

20. The function of contexts in vocabulary testing

Certain linguists engage in a dispute that vocabulary testing in context can provide a genuine scenario for test-takers while the adoption of context in vocabulary testing is fiercely an argued question.

Vocabulary can be typically assessed in meaning, spelling, and usage.

In such tests, the test-taker will be screened to know whether they acquire the meaning and spelling of words without context.

However, the word usage is not tested.

The usage of words is tested in such genuine influence of contexts on vocabulary testing scenarios by adapting to the context to know whether the person taking the test actually acquires the usage of words or not.

Vocabulary Tests Practice Questions and Answers

Here are sample questions and answers to assist you in your preparation and practice for a vocabulary test:

Question One

Fill the blank with the correct word: ‘The decision will _ the whole nation.’

A. Implement
B. Impress
C. Impact
D. Implant

The correct answer is C. Impact

Question Two

What is another word for ‘precarious’?

A. Uncertain
B. Secure
C. Exalted
D. Important

The correct answer is A. Uncertain

Question Three

The synonym of ‘Parochial’ is what?

A. Unorthodox
B. Baffling
C. Conservative
D. Abstract

The correct answer is C. Conservative

Question Four

What word can be used as the opposite of ‘counterfeit’?

A. Genuine
B. Cheat
C. Fraudulent
D. Deceit

The correct answer is A. Genuine

Question Five

What word can be used as an antonym of ‘intrepid’?

A. Fearful
B. Timid
C. Cowardly
D. Courageous

The correct answer is D. Courageous

Conclusion

A vocabulary test is used to measure an individual’s understanding of the meaning of a range of words.

You can create a quiz or test to assess the width and depth of vocabulary that somebody may have.

Vocabulary quizzes are frequently used in organizations as part of the recruitment process to help identify the level of intelligence of prospective employees.

Vocabulary assessments are also used in schools and universities as part of their educational program to help improve student’s grammar.

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