I started to do the first 5000 word Spanish course but I seem to know most of the words. I’m wondering if there is somewhere or some test to tell how big your vocabulary actually is. I’m still going to finish the course because that way I make sure I know all of the first 5000 words but just wondering where I stand and if there is some way to test that.
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There isn’t any kind of ‘placement test’ on Memrise, so you kind of just have to let it ‘catch up’ with you as you learn words on it.
It may not be practical, but one idea is for you to brainstorm the words you already know (more of a hassle the farther you are in learning the language), put those words into a self-created course, and use the ‘auto-learn’ feature. This would add them to your item count and review rotation, but skip the ‘learning’ process.
There used to be an ‘auto-ignore’ feature, which let you scan a course and set any items you’ve learned in another course to ‘ignored’. Unfortunately though, it was recently removed, and I don’t know if Memrise has any plans to bring it back.
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I was sort of wondering if anyone knew of any other tests on the internet somewhere, anywhere - not necessarily on Memrise that would test the number of words you know.
Get a frequency list, randomize it, and test yourself on it. I would score each word 0 (don’t recognize it at all) to 5 (know it extremely well.
If you do that in Excel, you can hide the frequency data while you’re doing the test and after you’re done there should be a way to generate a nice graph.
I’ve forgotten the statistics of how big a sample you would need to take to get a somewhat accurate test. Perhaps 500 out of the most frequent 20,000 words is okay to get an idea?
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I was kind of hoping that someone else had already created a test like that on the internet. That sounds like more work than it’s worth - unless of course you could somehow make money off of it.
try giving “test your spanish” in your search engine (google?)…
Nice plan, but You can’t use review, if you haven’t learned the words
If you use the auto-learn feature that I mentioned, it will set the words to learned without going through the regular learning session. This only works on courses that you either created or are a contributor for though.
I recently found Language Zen, a language-learning website (with just Spanish for right now). You could try taking their placement test—the result will tell you how many words they think you know—although I have no idea how accurate it is, especially if you already know so much. It seems to be geared toward beginner and intermediate learners, but it feels more legit than most of the other quizzes I’ve found through Google.
There was test created by The Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language that sounded promising, but it looks like it’s been taken down or moved. 
I wish that feature would come back… that would be nice.
Yeah, I’ve done that but those tests are too easy and they will tell you if you are a beginner or an intermediate but don’t really tell you how many words you know. I’m going through the First 1-5000 Spanish words and I’m seeing about half of them I already know - but I also hate that they have words like Miami and Colombia that aren’t really words but are names.
I figure I know at least 2500 words but maybe more. I am also taking several other courses at the same time Learn Spanish Congregation, DELE B1 Test Prep, Top Spoken Spanish Verb Forms and Spanish Idioms Intermediate Phrases: Exito de Venta. My profile says I’ve learned 3801 words but as I said, I know a lot of them that are presented to me and that also includes different verb congegations. It would be nice if I could get some kind of estimate I know at least 2500 and somewhere less than 6000 I would think but I could know more words. I’ve been studying for a long time.
Most of the tests I’ve taken on the internet say I am a B1 or a B2.
Perhaps Miami and Colombia aren’t absolutely necessary, but for the place names, language names, etc that are different than English, I think it’s useful to learn them. (IE: Alemania, Portugués, Turco, etc).
As for how to count how many words you know… are you aware of the +Spanish courses by @eunoia? They’re organized in order of frequency. You might be able to get an idea of how many words you’ve learned by looking at every 5th or 10th lesson to see if you still 90-100% of the words in the lesson. Do this for Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, and Adverbs, and then you may be able to get a rough count. For example, if you know the nouns through lesson 100, verbs through 120, adjectives through 90, and adverbs through 50, than you’d know around 3600 words.
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