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Penguin English Guides
Test Your Vocabulary 4 Revised Edition
This is the fourth book in a series of five vocabulary practice books, which are graded in difficulty for elementary to advanced students of English. Each book contains 50 exercises, which test and teach vocabulary in various topic areas, and 700 new words and phrases.
92 pages, Paperback
First published August 6, 2002
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June 28, 2021
The real test of a book for language trainers is less what they theoretically think of it than how often they find themselves using it. By that standard I find that this book does well. In fact I decided it was time to finally write a review of it since people in Goodreads have given books in the "Test your Vocabulary" series top ratings but nobody has so far reviewed books in the series at least not this one. I have no idea what improvements were introduced with the "revised edition" but it is the only version listed here. My comments refer to the original edition, my copy reprinted 1987.
The exercises are simple and mostly standard gap filling, and useful and are for the general learner covering many different aspects of vocabulary, vocabulary according to themes such as "animal kingdom" or "bits and pieces" where the word has to match the picture, prepositional phrases (that is where many quite advanced learners struggle) word building which is filling the gap with a word from a provided root, and much more.
Although there is no statement to that effect, users will find that in cases where there are two in a series (for example Word Building 1 and later in the book Word Building 32) the later exercise is appreciably more difficult. Some exercises strike me as being much more useful than others. The Word Building is very useful indeed, whereas the Newspaper misprints, where the task is to correct a funny misprint is not something which I have personally ever thought could be useful for any learner. It would be more appropriate as a speed exercise for native speakers who were aspiring copy editors. (Given the poor quality of copy editing inr ecent years, that might be a good idea!)
Another thumbs down: The synonyms and opposites crosswords are unnecessarily small. I also find the mixed captions exercises (with wrong cartoons) unuseful. In fact I have never used them ,because the last thing a learner needs in my opinion is to see the wrong comment under a given picture.
I find the Confusing Words exercise very useful, probably most useful for learners whose native language includes many false friends with English or words whose use is slightly different in English to theirs. German learners for example tend to use the word "possibility" instead of "opportunity" or "chance".
Another not to be underestimated advantage for any dinosaur out there like me still using paper books for English language training is that the Test your Vocabulary series consist of very small and light books which slip in easily into a satchel or briefcase.
All in all this is a highly useful resource (especially, another point to note, in view of the fact that many of the exercises are such that a trainer would have to invest considerable time crafting him or herself) and if I had to limit myself to just twenty books for English training, Test Your Vocabulary 4 by Peter Watcyn-Jones would be among the twenty.
The exercises are simple and mostly standard gap filling, and useful and are for the general learner covering many different aspects of vocabulary, vocabulary according to themes such as "animal kingdom" or "bits and pieces" where the word has to match the picture, prepositional phrases (that is where many quite advanced learners struggle) word building which is filling the gap with a word from a provided root, and much more.
Although there is no statement to that effect, users will find that in cases where there are two in a series (for example Word Building 1 and later in the book Word Building 32) the later exercise is appreciably more difficult. Some exercises strike me as being much more useful than others. The Word Building is very useful indeed, whereas the Newspaper misprints, where the task is to correct a funny misprint is not something which I have personally ever thought could be useful for any learner. It would be more appropriate as a speed exercise for native speakers who were aspiring copy editors. (Given the poor quality of copy editing inr ecent years, that might be a good idea!)
Another thumbs down: The synonyms and opposites crosswords are unnecessarily small. I also find the mixed captions exercises (with wrong cartoons) unuseful. In fact I have never used them ,because the last thing a learner needs in my opinion is to see the wrong comment under a given picture.
I find the Confusing Words exercise very useful, probably most useful for learners whose native language includes many false friends with English or words whose use is slightly different in English to theirs. German learners for example tend to use the word "possibility" instead of "opportunity" or "chance".
Another not to be underestimated advantage for any dinosaur out there like me still using paper books for English language training is that the Test your Vocabulary series consist of very small and light books which slip in easily into a satchel or briefcase.
All in all this is a highly useful resource (especially, another point to note, in view of the fact that many of the exercises are such that a trainer would have to invest considerable time crafting him or herself) and if I had to limit myself to just twenty books for English training, Test Your Vocabulary 4 by Peter Watcyn-Jones would be among the twenty.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review