the test would be too hard for them. Everyone would receive a score of zero or nearly zero, and that would make the test useless: you would gain no useful information about the relative strengths of their vocabularies. List B is no better. The odds are high that all of your applicants would know the definitions of bath, travel, and carpet. Everyone would obtain a perfect or nearly perfect score. Once again, you would learn nothing, in this case because the test would be too easy. FIG. 2.1. Three words from each of three hypothetical word lists.
