Answering in English

Answering in English is easy. Just type the word in the box and press Enter or click OK. Some of the answer may be filled in for you -- for example "to ... " if it's a verb.

Most French nouns are shown with the definite article (le,  la, l' or les) but you don't need to type the when you answer in English.

Answering in French

This is more complicated than English because you may need to show that you know the word's gender.

When you are entering a French noun, click the checkbox to select the gender first. The article ("le" or "une" etc) will be filled in automatically. If you change your mind about the gender before clicking OK, don't edit the article itself -- just click the other checkbox and the change will be made for you.

A lot of words in French have masculine and feminine forms (like waiter and waitress in English). The tests always ask you for the masculine word -- even when this is the less common one -- for example "nurse [male]" (= "un infirmier"). When this happens, the masculine box is checked automatically and the article is inserted for you.

To insert a letter with an accent, click one of the buttons under the Answer box. The letter will appear at the end of your answer. (You may also need these buttons for a few English words.)

Marking

After clicking OK you will see:

Because this is a French test, you don't lose any marks for spelling mistakes in English! As long as the word is recognisable, you will get a full mark. But a misspelt word in French will only earn you 3/4 (0.75) of a mark.

Progress Counters

The counters at the bottom of the page tell you how much of the test or lesson is left to complete and show you how many marks you have earned so far.

Test Tips

• Be patient! Wait for each  page to download completely before you start to answer.
• Remember which language you are answering in! Some French words (particularly adjectives) look like English e.g. "large" = "wide". If in doubt, look at the sub-heading and at the counters near the bottom of the page.
• The tests don't use any words which are very similar in both languages (e.g. "hospital" and "hôpital" so, if you want to make a guess don't copy the original word - because you will always be wrong.
• All your answers should be between four and fifteen characters because the tests don't use  words which are too long or too short
• Don't enter articles like 'a' and 'the' when answering in English. These are only used in French to indicate the gender.

How the Words were Chosen

The tests are based on the vocabulary used in wordPROF^® French. The wordPROF^® vocabulary contains about 9,000 words and phrases which are organised into twelve different courses. These include courses which teach the full word lists for four GCSE boards.

The wordPROF^® courses are 'progressive' in the sense that you are expected to complete all the courses up to the level you want to reach. For example, you should learn the Beginners' vocabulary before starting on GCSE Foundation.

For wordPROF.com, we selected vocabulary from seven courses. The Beginners' course covers essential words like numbers, family, days of the week etc. The next three courses contain words which are common in  GCSE exams and the three advanced ones cover the vocabulary for typical A Level topics.

Some of the vocabulary entries aren't used in the tests -- for example phrases like "il se rase" (= "he is shaving") or words which have two possible answers like "écran" (=   "screen" or "monitor"). For details of some other words which aren't used, see Tips.

The first page of the test shows the total number of words and phrases in each course (not just the number featured in the test). This is the figure we use when we estimate your vocabulary at the end of the test.

Tests in wordPROF

The vocabulary on the CD-ROM is basically the same as the online version so, on average you should get the same scores whichever one you use.  However, the CD-based tests are faster and more user friendly -- and there's no phone bill!

Lessons in wordPROF

Our online vocabulary lessons give you access to nearly all the vocabulary wordPROF's approach to teaching but, for serious study, there's no contest -- the CD-ROM gives you  heaps of extra features.  

"A Warning from our Statistician"

Testing over the web can be a bit slow so we've kept the number of words in the course test down -- and ten isn't really enough to estimate your vocabulary very accurately. For example, if you knew 50% of the words in a course and took a few tests, then about two thirds of your scores should be in the range 35% to 65%   and the other third would be outside.

These tests are new and we haven't been able to correlate them with users' eventual exam grades or anything like that -- so you will have to judge for yourself how well you are doing. Get some friends or classmates to take our tests too and see how your results compare.