I found the same thing. I suspect a combination of the early respondents being quite a bit above average and the possibility that some people are checking words they don't actually know, or simple believe they know a correct definition for.
I think it would be a good idea to weight the survey with some test questions that ask if you know a definition to some of the less common words and then ask you to pick a correct definition from a list of 5 with 4 incorrect answers. At least this way they can approximate how much someone may exaggerate their knowledge.
However as someone who answered as honestly as I could (without spending the time to verify my definition of each word) it is cool to know what my personal vocabulary is.
I think it would be a good idea to weight the survey with some test questions that ask if you know a definition to some of the less common words and then ask you to pick a correct definition from a list of 5 with 4 incorrect answers. At least this way they can approximate how much someone may exaggerate their knowledge.
However as someone who answered as honestly as I could (without spending the time to verify my definition of each word) it is cool to know what my personal vocabulary is.
Also this article does claim 24k-30k is the average for native english speakers: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/english-lan...