Frequently Asked Questions

Welcome to the world’s only total vocabulary management system. Verbocity is the only program that tracks a user’s vocabulary development and generates personalized lessons to meet individual needs. It is also the only place where users can develop a “Professional Grade” vocabulary online in just 5 minutes a day. Below you will find the answers to the most frequently asked questions about the program. For those of you who want to jump right in, you are invited to test drive the program for 7 days using our Free Trial. Parents and Teachers are encouraged to try out our new Custom Word List feature and see how they can use Verbocity to improve student performance while freeing up valuable class time. To give a student unlimited access to the “Must-Have” vocabulary management system click here to Subscribe.

A Vocabulary Management System (VMS) is a tool that allows parents, teachers or students to organize, develop and track the acquisition of a student’s core English vocabulary.  A core vocabulary contains all the essential, non-specialized terms that one encounters in oral or written communication. The following is a brief summary of the advantages Verbocity provides parents, teachers and students.

Parents & Teachers – Acquiring a core vocabulary is a multi-year task and only Verbocity gives you the ability to manage the entire process.  Verbocity stays with a student as they change grades, teachers or schools.  It tracks and maintains a real-time inventory of the Target Words a student has studied and learned by grade level.  With Verbocity you always know the exact status of a student’s verbal inventory.  In addition, Verbocity provides you the option to create custom word list for stories, assignments or any other criteria.  The program then generates individualized lessons based on your custom word list and a particular student’s verbal inventory. As part of every lesson Verbocity administers and grades a Target Word quiz and provides real time performance statistics for each student as well as access to the Target Word sentences they composed. 

Students – Verbocity is a quick, easy, practical and rewarding vocabulary builder and manager.

Quick – Lessons take an average of 5 minutes to complete.
Easy – We provide full, clear definitions, audio pronunciations, synonyms and heaps of thought provoking and often humorous example sentences.
Practical – You learn only the words you need to know. We cover the words that appear most frequently in oral or written communications or on standardized tests such as the SAT, ACT, TOEFL, COOP etc.
Rewarding – A great vocabulary is your ticket to higher earnings.  Studies show that people with large vocabularies earn about $33,000 more per year.  In addition, you will have the chance to earn valuable prizes right now in our “War of Words Contest”.

Why Verbocity is a “Must-Have” - Few people understand that words are the base of human knowledge and the mental tools we use to categorize, analyze and organize information.  Consequently, many are surprised to learn that a large vocabulary is both vital to success and relatively rare to find in today’s students. Consider the following:

• “Literacy is the cornerstone of school achievement. Students with large vocabularies have greater overall academic success in every field of instruction.” (HarvardSchool of Education)
• “Only 12% of 15 year olds have the top-level vocabulary skills necessary to understand complex texts and evaluate information.”  (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)

Information Age students must be able to quickly and accurately digest huge amounts of complex information.  Attempting to do this with an inadequate vocabulary leads to frustration and failure.  As a result, today’s busy students must have a quick, easy, reliable and enjoyable way to develop a “Professional Grade” vocabulary. 

There are over 600,000 words in English.  To learn the meaning of all the words would take a lifetime.  Fortunately, there is no need to learn them all. That’s because the vast majority of words are specialized terms that are seldom used outside the specific fields of study to which they belong such as medicine, law, economics, computers etc.  The backbone of English is made up by a relatively small number of general purpose words that comprise 99+% of all written or oral communications.  Verbocity identified these 9,100 terms using computerized frequency analysis.  It is these general purpose words that every English user needs to learn in order to read effortlessly, understand complex text and communicate with precision and clarity. That’s why we refer to these words as a “Professional Grade” vocabulary.

Poor reading comprehension is almost always the result of a poor vocabulary. Conversely, readers who know the precise meaning of every word in a passage have no trouble understanding its meaning.  In addition, such readers can easily identify nuances, implications and other subtleties that readers with inadequate vocabularies will often miss. Verbocity users routinely get top scores in reading comprehension and frequently report that their improved vocabulary makes reading easier and much more enjoyable.

The value of a large vocabulary is not limited to making a good impression.  Numerous studies have proven a direct link between the size of a worker’s vocabulary and their level of success and income. On average, individuals with the highest literacy skills earn more than $33,000 per year more than those with inadequate verbal skills.  Over the course of a career this could mean an extra $1.5 million in income.

Parents and teachers want their students to reach their full potential.  One requirement to achieve this admirable goal is to give them a “Professional Grade Vocabulary”.  A large vocabulary reduces frustration and gives students the ability to efficiently process vast quantities of information.  Students in command of the English language find that reading and writing are easy and enjoyable pastimes.

Businesses have discovered that out-sourcing certain non-core business functions enables them to concentrate on what they do best.  Verbocity brings this same principal to bear in the field of education. Verbocity specializes in one thing – Vocabulary Development.  We offer the expertise and tools that are beyond the scope of any parent, teacher or school. Such as:

1. Complete Target Word Database – Through frequency analysis of millions of pages of text and critical analysis of standardized tests such as the SAT, ACT and TOEFL we identified the most used and useful words in the English language and organized them by grade level. The database covers 99+% of words used in oral or written communications.
2. Convenient Online Access – Our internet based lessons are available to students 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  At school, at home or anywhere all it takes is just 5 minutes to complete a lesson.  
3. Research Proven Lessons – Each Verbocity lesson is scientifically designed to maximize student understanding and retention. For each Target Word we provide an audio pronunciation, concise definition, synonyms and up to 20 example sentences.
4. Student Submitted Sentences - To ensure that Target Words become part of the student’s active vocabulary we require that every student submit a sentence of their own for each Target Word.  Teachers can retrieve and review their students’ sentences for grammar, spelling, proper usage etc. The best student sentences are entered into a contest and voted on by the public.  The top vote getters receive valuable prizes.
5. Dynamically Generated Retention Exercises – As part of each lesson students must match previously studied Target Words with their definitions.  Exercises are dynamically generated based on each individual student’s history of words studied and their performance on prior retention exams.  The content of these exercises assures that Target Words reappear at specific intervals to reinforce retention and to ensure that each student develops a complete professional-grade vocabulary.
6. Custom Word Lists – Verbocity gives teachers the ability to create their own Target Word study lists and control student access to a list.  Verbocity provides real time group and individual statistics for each student.

The bottom line is that Verbocity works.  Verbocity’s features enable the average student to learn and retain 90+% of all the Target Words studied.

If you’ve got a list of vocabulary words you want your students to learn, our Custom Word list feature can help.  The Custom Word List feature will generate individualized lessons and retention exams for your students and maintain detailed statistics on their performance, saving valuable class time. This feature allows parents and teachers to establish which words a student or group of students study.  Lessons are identical to those generated using one of the standard series.  Parents and teachers are provided with group and individual student statistics and can review student submitted sentences for grammar, spelling, etc. Here are the 3 steps to creating your own custom word list:

Create Parent/Teacher Account

1. On the homepage, click any subscribe link.
2. Sign up for the free parent/teacher account.
3. Using the username and password created in Step 1, login on the homepage.

4. Click “create a new list” button. 
5. Name the list.
6. Enter a description of the list.
7. Select whether you want to make this list available to other parents/teachers.
8. Enter the words for your list separated by a comma. 
9. Click "Create List" (Words submitted are compared to our database and if there is a match they are added to the custom list. Words not in our database can be submitted for consideration and possible inclusion in the Target Word database.)

10. Click “Create a new group”
11. Name the group, select the custom word list for the group and click “Create Group”.  
12. Note the Group ID#.  This is the number you provide to your students.
13. Students can request to join a group by clicking on My Account on the My Verbocity Page.
14. Each time you login you will see the number of students who have requested to join a group. You can either admit them to the group or deny access.

Statistics for each group appear at the bottom of your custom word list page. You can review individual student statistics and sentences by clicking on their username.

Let me tell you a little secret.  Test preparation courses are expensive and for the most part a huge waste of time and money.  The College Board, owners of the SAT, did a study of students who take preparation courses and found that on average, they increase verbal scores by 10 points or one question for every 25 to 30 hours of study. The reason for these abysmal results is simple.  The verbal sections of standardized tests are sophisticated vocabulary exams and you can’t dramatically improve a person’s vocabulary in a few hours.  The only way to effectively prepare for these tests requires a long-term approach.  Ideally, students should begin using Verbocity years before taking such a test. Then, starting 6 months before the exam, they can use one of our test specific lesson generators to ensure they know the words that appear most frequently on that particular test.  This type of long-term approach gives our users a huge advantage.  Many report that they find it very easy to get the top scores on the verbal sections of these exams. We have even had Verbocity students as young as 12 score in the 95 percentile on college admissions tests.

Verbocity lessons are customized to fit each particular student based on their history of Target Words studied and learned.  The program automatically selects each lesson’s 5 Target Words and 20 matching questions in order to maximize learning and optimize retention.

Verbocity lessons include a retention exam with up to 20 matching questions featuring Target Words and their definitions.  Five of the Target Words are from the current lesson.  The other 15 Target Words are from previous lessons and provide the type of systematic reinforcement that produces sure-fire retention.

Verbocity lessons include an audio file with a professional pronunciation of the Target Word.  Students can listen to a correct pronunciation rather than struggle with phonetic symbols.

For each Target Word we provide between 3 and 20 example sentences.  There are over 50,000 example sentences in the database and we are constantly adding more from a variety of sources including our subscribers. The sentences demonstrate proper usage and include idioms and famous quotations.

The Verbocity free trial lasts for 7 days.  During the free trial period you will have the same unrestricted access to the program that regular subscribers enjoy. Try it today and see for yourself how easy it is to develop a Professional Grade Vocabulary. Start your trial now.

Users are required to submit a sentence for each Target Word they study. In order to encourage creative and clever uses of these Target Words we sponsor the “War of Words Contest”.  Here is how the contest works:

Every regular subscriber or free trial user is eligible. Sentences are judged on clarity, cleverness, rationality, humor and zest.  Originality is optional.  The sentences we select are then voted on by visitors to the Verbocity website.  The sentence which receives the highest vote total at the time the contest ends is declared the winner.

Composing a sentence using each Target Word is important to making that word part of your active vocabulary. Just reading the Target Word pages and taking the retention exercises would give you the ability to recognize a word when you encounter it but the goal of Verbocity is to make each word an ordinary part of your thinking and communications.  That’s why we require students to write sentences using the Target Words.

There are just 2 rules for the sentences:

• Sentences must be between 15 and 150 characters in length.
• Sentences must include the Target Word or one of its forms.

Sentences that include profanity or offensive material may result in cancellation of subscription.

The answer depends on your goals, age and current level of vocabulary development. Below is a brief description of each lesson generator and what it offers.  Remember, whichever series you choose, Verbocity will record each word you study and learn.  Therefore, you can switch between lesson generators as needed and the program will continue to generate individualized lessons based on your verbal inventory.

• Verbocity Express Lesson Generator – Our most popular series.  Covers the complete set of Target Words arranged by grade level. Quick, easy and suitable for any student.
• Verbocity Classic Lesson Generator – The original series in which Target Words are introduced in the context of classical literature.  Stories are annotated with context specific footnotes that explain challenging concepts, idioms and phrases. Because this series includes reading it requires more time than Verbocity Express.  Suitable for any student and a great favorite of homeschoolers.
• High School Entrance Exams Lesson Generator – Covers the approximately 1,500 words that appear most frequently on the HSPT, COOP, ISEE and other high school entrance exams.  For best results, students should begin using this series at least 6 months prior to taking the exam.
• SAT & ACT Lesson Generator – Covers the approximately 4,500 words that most frequently appear on the SAT and ACT. For best results, students should begin using this series at least 12 months prior to taking the exam.
• TOEFL Lesson Generator - Covers the approximately 2,000 words that appear most frequently on the TOEFL and other English proficiency exams.  For best results, students should begin using this series at least 6 months prior to taking the exam.

To effectively use the program student’s should be able to read at approximately a 3rd grade level.

The cost of a single Verbocity subscription is $28.95.

You must be 100% satisfied with Verbocity or we will gladly refund your subscription. Period. No equivocations, qualifications or limitations. Your satisfaction is our only criteria. If you are not happy with Verbocity contact us for a full and immediate refund.

We are committed to providing you with a “Professional Grade Vocabulary” as quickly as possible. For some that may take months and for others it will take years. Consequently, a subscription to Verbocity provides unlimited access to all our powerful tools for as long as you need it. We are here to help 24/7/365.

Verbocity tracks the Target Words each student studies and learns and uses this data to determine the appropriate content of each of our personalized lessons.  Sharing an account will produce poor results.

No.  It is now possible to use your credit card to pay for Verbocity without establishing a Paypal account.

Yes.  Schools or homeschool groups with 20 or more students are eligible to receive the following discounted prices per student:

Group enrollments are easy to establish and administer and can normally be completed within 24 hours. Send an email to get the details.

Verbocity collects user-submitted account information such as name and email address to identify users and send notifications related to the use of the service. As a matter of policy, except where you are expressly informed otherwise, we do not sell, rent, share, trade or give away any of your personal information unless required by law or for the protection of your membership. If we change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on our web site so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.