When taking the initial test I achieved 32 out of 50. How do I take another test to learn if I have improved?

VocabSushi is designed to track your progress as you work with it. So your current Vocab Level (which is shown at the top of the Words, Learn, and Progress pages) is always your current skill level as VocabSushi sees it. This score increases when more difficult words are added to your list to replace ones you’ve learned.

Playing games and working in the Learn section adjusts your individual word progress - which is shown throughout the site as a little soy sauce bottle. The more full the bottle, the more likely we think it is you know that word. If you do know it, just click the little checkmark icon to take a quick quiz and move the word off your list. It will be replaced by another, slightly more challenging one.  You can also check your progress on the Progress page, which will show several of the words you’re doing really well on and those you should practice more. If you have a lot that you’re doing well on, take a Final Exam to move several off your list (and get new ones) quickly.

Despite all this, if you feel the words you have are too simple or too hard, you can recalibrate your vocab level by taking the initial quiz again. But know that if you take the quiz again, the Words I’m Learning list will be wiped out and replaced with words at the new level. If you just want to see how you’re doing, use the Progress page, take the FInal Exam or click the Learned Check mark next to any given word, and play games.

You can recalibrate your level here

If I signed up for SAT and want to change to another test, how do I do that?

At the moment, there is no way to change your test after signing up. What we can do is delete your account completely and you can re-sign up. The vocab lists for similar tests are actually the same. So if you’re considering a “lateral” test move - ie, from SAT to ACT, or the ISEE to the SSAT (both are middle school tests) - there is no need, since the vocab lists are the same. If, however, you want to go from the SAT to the GRE, then the wordlists do change. It looks like you are at level 36, so you do have a ways to go until level 50 and therefore it isn’t pressing to change your test in the system. In other words, SAT level 36 is basically like GRE level 25. So the only difference is that you’ll have more words to learn on top of what you’ll learn for the SAT wordlist already. If, however, you find yourself at level 49 of a particular test, it would definitely make sense to switch to a more challenging test as it will give you more difficult words to work on.

Is there a way to control the number of words I am learning?

300 words may seem like an unwieldy number of words to try to work with at once. Normally, it would be, but VocabSushi isn’t meant to be used like a list of vocab words. Instead, you should focus your efforts on reading individual sentences and gradually learn words as you read them and answer questions. One of the main reasons for having 300 words is to create a useful experience in the “Reading Articles” section. If you only had a group of, say, 25 words on your list, it would be nearly impossible to find more than one or two articles that contain at least 2 of them. We found that having a larger list of words offers the kind of flexibility necessary to match up with dozens of articles that have two or more words from that specific list. Additionally, the variety of words helps to make the VocabSushi experience (from reading sentences, to articles, to sentence completion questions) as diverse as possible so it is interesting.

That said, we would like to work out a feature that allows for specific grouping of 10 or so words into ‘target’ lists that would be used exclusively in a single session for highly repetitive vocab building.