Test for taiwanese highschool teachers.

These are pretty hard words, but the sentences are basically textbook definition level examples of their use. If you have even a hazy idea of the definitions, it’s not hard to place them.

I’m a native speaker, some of these are very obvious to me but man! Some of these have words I have never seen in my entire life. I am very well read and I’m studying in high academia and I have never encountered or used a fair number of these words.

As a native speaker I am only 100% confident in my answer on half of these. And there’s definitely some words in here that I don’t know the definition of

Wow, I’m not a native speaker, and the test seems very hard for me.

I'm an outlier, but I know all of these. The average native speaker? Probably not even half. But if you know at least two words out of each question, you have half a chance of success.

Don’t see the point of this test. Most native speakers are never going to use most of the words shown here

From the US: This would smack down most native English speakers here in the states. I got 7 of these outright and inferred one through knowledge of the other options so I'm confident I got them all, but there's not a single person in my family, wife included, that would get this with the exception of my sister who is an English teacher. Just as a side note: learning through context and understanding the other words enough to infer an answer is a great way to learn new vocabulary. Fantastic even. Never feel bad for not knowing something if your learning and adapting enough to figure it out on your own. Even native speakers do it via *context clues* not that different from this.

There was another one of these tests on the sub a week or two ago, and this one is harder. Most native speakers would not know all of them, but they would know some. Still, I wouldn't be surprised to see any of these words in undergraduate readings at university, with the expectation that students understand them.

The only ones I don't know at all are 2A and 2C.

confident on all bar 3 and 4, although about a quarter of the words i have never seen before

Turpitude is the only one I'm not familiar with, but honestly, major kudos to any non-native speaker who does well on this test - many native speakers wouldn't.

I tried doing this. Idk how good I did but here it is: 1. B. absolve 2. B. vindictive 3. C. prodigal 4. C. turpitude 5. C. conflate 6. D. ostensible 7. D. insinuation 8. A. braced for (I am not a high school teacher nor from Taiwan but still)

The vocabulary is definitely advanced, so a native speaker would have to be well educated or well read to know them all. I would say as a native speaker I almost exclusively answer this type of question by vibes or context clues and not a dictionary-definition understanding of each word.

All of the correct answers were obvious to me - definitely not beginner-level stuff, however.

I'm a native Canadian speaker. I struggled with numbers three and four, the rest I got easily. But this is a very difficult test that I think even native speakers would struggle with.

> taiwanese \*Tawainese Nationalities should always be capitalized. > highschool *high school Two words, not one. Just like elementary school and middle school.

I ain't a native speaker but this seems pretty difficult, but that's appropriate since this is for high school teachers. I at first thought this was for high schoolers and was gonna come to the comments like *????* But since it's for teachers this seems about right, maybe a bit on the difficult side but 👍👍 Edit: Took a moment to fully read the test and it's actually not that difficult to those who are familiar enough with English and since it's multiple choices, it's moderately easy enough to guess which one is the correct one. It may require a bit more focus to get it right and a lot of words put as options are somewhat difficult. I must confess that as a non-native speaker, I was a bit befuddled and also intimidated myself by not carefully reading and going through the test at first which made me (as I said before) *????*. So if I, at my level right now, took this test, I would've terrified myself when I see the multiple choices given and feel utterly disheartened...but after a slight panic, I would then read it and find that it's not as difficult as I thought. To conclude, I wouldn't say this is difficult but it's rather intimidating lol

I think that 3) is clearly C) “prodigal”, but I find it an odd and unlikely context for that word. It’s allowed, but a poor choice of words. Editors? Who’s with me?

For question 2, I feel like all four answers could fit in that sentence depending on what the CEO actually said. But I guess perfunctory would make the most sense

if you post this in Taiwanese communities on Facebook or whatever, a lot of people will say using these words is pretentious. Another test for Taiwanese teachers was posted there weeks ago and the same thing happened. They’d say high schools in Taiwan don’t teach most of these words at all, which is true. But teachers should know because I’d expect one at academic level to know most of these.

Most of these words are uncommon—some are so rare that you may never encounter them in daily life. That said, I’d expect most educated native speakers to get most or all questions correct, perhaps making 1-2 mistakes at most. Even if they don’t know the precise definitions of every option, they can often rely on contextual cues, educated guesses, or process of elimination to arrive at the right answer. Subjectively, if I were to rate them by real-world applicability... * Question 8 is the most practical: phrases like *"brace for impact"* or *"brace for bad news"* are relatively common in everyday spoken and written English. I would expect almost all native speakers, including most high school students, to answer this correctly. * Questions 1, 3, 5, 6, and 7 are rare but may find their way into formal spoken or complex written contexts so I'd expect most native speakers have encountered them. *"Absolve from responsibility"* (Q1) is a legal phrase but also used in moral discussions. *"Unqualified"* (Q3), though a fairly common word, is used here in a less common way meaning 'without reservations or restrictions' (as in *"unqualified support"* or *"unqualified praise"*). *"Conflate"* (Q5) is a formal word but appears a bit in journalistic or academic writing. "*Vicarious experience"* (Q6) is a term in psychology, but may appear in discussion of literature or entertainment. *"Insinuation"* (Q7) isn't frequent in casual speech but is not too uncommon in journalistic, political, or interpersonal contexts involving subtle accusations. * Questions 2 & 4 test vocabulary I would classify as very rare. Terms like *"perfunctory"* or *"turpitude"* are highly unlikely to be heard in daily speech, and even infrequent in writing. A native speaker could easily go their entire life without ever using or hearing *"turpitude"* unless they work in law, ethics, or high-level academia.

I know all of these words. You could expect to see any of them on a college entrance test in the US, but they are advanced vocabulary words. I don’t use them daily, by any means, but I like words and I’m lucky, in that I find new words relatively easy to learn and incorporate into my own vocabulary. 

not familiar with two words at all (polemical, trenchant). about 30% i'm familiar with but don't use or encounter regularly.

Where can i find the rest of this test?

Surprisingly, for me personally, this one was easier than the last couple ones I saw. I pretty much guessed all of them correctly immediately, and there were fewer words that I didn't know. The answers were simpler than I would've expected. The only one which confused me was 'prodigal' because it's so rarely used in that way. It's almost always used as the adjective form of 'prodigy', so "prodigal approval" made no sense until I looked up its other meanings. I dare say I'm a fair bit above average in the literacy department, but I'm no academic. I tend to overestimate the literacy of the average English speaker, so I am genuinely surprised when I see people struggle to read things that I breeze through, which really aren't that complicated. English education needs to be improved, for sure.

Native speaker: Not very hard, but it does require some focus. There are a couple of words which would make me wish I had a dictionary handy, but since it’s multiple choice, it’s not impossible to figure out.

Native speaker here. I know all these words, and have used them, but many are quite old usages. e.g. the phrase >!moral turpitude!<these days I'd only expect to see in a cryptic crossword or similar word puzzle.

I'm pretty sure I got all of these right, but there are some words like polemical which I would struggle to define but still know isn't the right fit for the sentence.

I didn’t know four of the words: trenchant, recalcitrant, polemical, and turpitude. Not to say the rest were easy.

Native speaker. Very simple. It’s a difficult test for a learner, though. 

I guess for some this could be hard, and the words obviously aren't in everyday usage. However, none of the options in any given question are close to being synonyms, so there is always one obvious answer, if, of course, you have a vague idea what any of the words mean.

I've seen or, at least, can say that it is a real English word about half of them, but surely know (and use) only *legitimize, perfunctory*, *obscure*, and *ostensible*. I love formal words; they can often be substituted for a handful of 'plain' ones, but that should only be a rare condiment. Not a native, but certified my poor B2 level a year ago.

Not hard.

If this is a test for *teachers* then nothing seems amiss here. I would not want to learn English from anyone who couldn't pass this test easily. That said, no this aren't words most people see in daily life. Students probably don't need to learn them until they are quite advanced. Most native speakers can probably pass this test but might make a mistake or two if they haven't had higher level English experience (including just reading lots of books).