[quote=“Icon”]Dear Charlie,
You would then have to assume that all words from the list are used on the test -which is not the case. You could -as Bob said- draw a frequency of usage, but also, since we do not know what changes they will impose next -they like to do 180’s from one year to the other- then caveat empteor.[/quote]
Not only that, it turns out that the pdf documents of the Basic Capability Tests are image documents, not text documents, so making a list out of the words on the tests would be quite a job of work.
I converted the first test page of the 96-02 test (the second test of 2007) to an image file, then downloaded a couple of free optical character reading programs, and didn’t have much luck with them. So I downloaded a third OCR program, scanned the image file from the first page of the 96-02 test and got this on the first try, for test items 1 and 2:
[quote]Look at due Pierre. What is in Me bowl?
The doctor said the woman mi~ne[/quote]
Has a kind of reggae flavor to it. 
After tinkering with the image a little on GIMP (a free graphics editor), that page seems to scan somewhat better, but in any case, I’m not sure I can make better time by scanning than I could by simply typing.
Anyway, I’ve decided to relax and take a bit-by-bit approach to the whole thing.
[quote]What I used to do to help the kids is to draw “clouds”, which are words that are related -within the list- and then add some that are not in the list, but you would probably need for understanding. Like “family”, one topic, take all the words related to it, and add a couple that seem logical but are not there.[/quote] I know almost nothing about the psychology of learning, but this method is bound to be better than the scattershot approach I’ve used in the past. I’ll probably give it a try; I think the thing for me will be to try to figure out how to put it on Moodle courseware.
I know all this thanking is repetitive as heck, but I gotta say again, thanks very much for all your help, Icon.
And thanks to bob, also. I’m pretty sure that by bringing this topic up, you helped me more than I helped you.
Charlie