How easily do you understand written English?

I agree that the scores you get are not always believable, LOL. You might find this site more useful: http://wordscount.info/ (Especially the Clear option)

Haha!~I've typed some fun stuff I made up & got a 10.75, hahaha!~It actually takes some high school to decipher the nonsense I wrote, haha!~This is quite fun, huhu!~

When I hit the CLEAR option, all the colours in the graph & the legend just so reminds me of the crayon packs the toddlers use in preschool, haha!~

Reading, writing listening and speaking all involve rather different skills. I would expect that you can read English much better than you are able to write or speak English (at the moment). Reading certainly does help a great deal with writing and improving your English generally. Speaking a different language from your own takes a little more practice and much more concentration, I find. Listening to news and other broadcasts in English is a good way to work on your pronunciation and accent. Thank you for your comment. You don't say whether you found the Guidelines easy or difficult, though!

hehe sorry for having not tell u the answer .i can understand it .only 11 words i do not know !hehe i listen to bbc and npr and ap everyday.and i read new from the websites such as bbc home page, newyork times reuters,and so on! thank u for ur suggestions!

I do agree with you, annberlin. There is a need for a much more dynamic way of learning English (and any other language). I also believe that anyone should be able to learn any other language at a reasonable price. Many resources are free: one should only have to pay for good tutorials and guidance at what they cost to provide and that could really be within anyone's reach, depending on what they needed.

You have always struck me, Nannacroc, as a very 'literate' person. I wonder if it is something about the language such documents are written in (I find the Terms even more of a 'maze of words' than the Guidelines). Welcome back, by the way: 'long time no see' (which is surely Pidgin in origin!)

Physiology (the length of one's tongue, for example) actually has no effect. I know plenty of pure-blood Chinese (and other nationalities) who are able to speak other languages perfectly, as if they were 'natives'. It is all to do with your ear (how you hear the sounds) and the way you learn to use the muscles of your tongue and throat. It is possible to learn to make the sounds that are foreign to our native language but, it has to be said, it is MUCH harder after you are about six or seven years old. By that age something seems to happen so that we are 'fixed' into one way of speaking and things like the English 'th' (which is different, anyway, depending on the word and also where you come from in the English-speaking community) become very difficult to change. English speakers have most difficulty with foreign vowels (in some cases we cannot even hear a difference). In Chinese, I think the biggest difficulty would be with tones. We use tonal differences but only to indicate a slight (or sometimes radical) difference in the meaning of a sentence or a phrase. I suspect that you (if you are Chinese) think of the tone appropriate to a particular meaning of a collection of sounds in the same way that an English speaker would instinctively know the difference between 'where' and 'wear' (which are pronounced exactly the same in 'Standard British' English). In Chinese, the two words would, of course, have a different symbol but they might also have a different 'tone' or intonation (if they were the same collection of consonants and vowels) which a Chinese speaker would instinctively think of as separate words. We have to make a distinction with spelling and sometimes even that is confusing ... think of 'read', pronounced 'reed' (the present tense) and 'read' (the past tense, pronounced 'red'). Most English speakers would know what to do when presented with the word (many might stumble if asked to read out loud) but I shudder to think what a foreigner might make of it! Your Chinese characters are pretty unequivocal - a character identifies a fairly universal idea and I knew someone once who could speak no Chinese but claimed to be able to read Chinese novels with understanding: I don't know what process he used but he knew the meaning of the characters in English (whether he got the real meaning from the text is another matter!). Our English words are not quite the same, I feel. You not only have to understand the meaning of the words but also how they are changed and modified by prefixes and suffixes and by their use in particular circumstances.

Wow, thanks a lot for your great comment! A new TOEFL test so-called IBT (internet-based TOEFL) that assesses the four basic language skills-listening, reading, writing and speaking is very popular for Chinese English learners! In order to get a good mark, the international examinees need not only to understand English pretty well, but also to be able to communicate effectively. One thing is sure, the reading part is much more difficult than mylot guidelines and any other mylot things. However, it is a still a piece of cake for some guys to get full mark, 4! However, even some very excellent speakers can't do well in the oral English part! You are right, not until we were six years old, we started to learn English speakeing. Then, speaking excellently is just too hard! Anyway, I will find a way to get through this! I will always admire your writing style anyway

Since English is your first language, perhaps you detected a 'hidden agenda' in my discussion - and responded to it. I write on many levels, however, and I wasn't only wondering how many people have read and understood the Guidelines ...