Word of the Week
With its 120th word, Word of the Week has now come to an end. We hope you enjoyed this free feature and that it has given you an insight into the thinking and research behind the English Vocabulary Profile.
All 120 are still available to read in our archive, below. Each Word of the Week in the archive is followed by a link to the full entry for that word on the English Vocabulary Profile. To view the entries, you will need to subscribe to the EVP: to subscribe for free click here.
Word of the week: agree
Three senses are included in the EVP for the verb agree, ranging in level from A2 up to B2. A further sense to be included at the C levels will be that of BE THE SAME (as in Does the information in the two reports agree?) However, this use is not appropriate before C1 level, and is more typically used in academic English. Notice that the various prepositions used with agree have been highlighted in the examples. Learners often make mistakes with their choices of preposition – for example, the Cambridge Learner Corpus shows us that they are often unsure whether to use to or with, and erroneously produce agree for instead of agree with.To view the full entry for agree on the English Vocabulary Profile, please click here.
Word of the week: quite
The adverb quite is known from A2 level in the sense of NOT COMPLETELY (as in She’s quite tall but not as tall as her sister.), and learners at A2 also use the phrases quite a few/ quite a lot. The informal phrase quite a bit is used at B1 level. A common collocation from B1 level is sure (as in Are you quite sure you want to go?) The use of the phrase not quite is indicative of more complex learner language and has been given B2 level in the EVP.To view the full entry for quite on the English Vocabulary Profile, please click here.
Word of the week: mean
Take a look at the Word family box within the entry for mean, which shows the related words known by learners up to B2 level. For example, they know two senses of the adjective meaningful at B2, but there is far less evidence for the adjective meaningless, until C1 level. The verb itself is clearly of high frequency in the language classroom (as in What does this word mean?) and this sense has been given A2, along with the use of I mean… for correction. Several other meanings of the verb are known at B1 level, but the adjective appears not to be known until B2.To view the full entry for mean on the English Vocabulary Profile, please click here.
