Wednesday 13 July 2016

I did one of those silly "tests"

yesterday. You know the sort of thing I mean? They appear on your time line to try and entice you to waste a little time doing something absolutely meaningless. They are designed to tell you which Hogwarts house you belong to, which author or artist or musician you might be, guess how old you are or where you would like most to go on holiday.
I almost always ignore them. I like to think I am immune. Of course I am not immune. I did one yesterday.
My only excuse is that I was waiting for someone to send a reply to an e-mail I had just sent. We had been sending messages backwards and forwards for over an hour. I knew my last one to him would take a little while to get a response.
....and there was the "vocabulary" test. I did it. I wasted a few minutes. Even as I was doing it I knew I was wasting my time. It irritated me because, as a measure of vocabulary, it was anything but good. 
I think my vocabulary is reasonable. I can  usually express what  I need to say in every day life. I know how to use dictionaries. I suppose I should be satisfied with that because I know a great many people who can't.
What I can't always express by any means is what I want to say, especially when I am writing. The cat hairs simply don't line up the way I would like on the page. That frustrates me.
Vocabulary is about so much more than the words we know. It's about being able to actually use them - in the right places.

1 comment:

jeanfromcornwall said...

It's not only the words used - it is the words heard and written as well. My dear OH has a bit of deafness, and quite often he will comment on a news item in a way which makes me realise he has misheard it. He is highly intelligent and a speedy reader too, which makes him occasionally misconstrue. It is hard to find a way to put him right without putting him down. And I have been known to get words wrong myself!