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.
"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.