· 19 lists · 667 words

Knowledge and evidence

How someone knows what they claim.

What holds these lists together

These lists are not about a subject but about a question: how sure is a statement? A source, a sample and a memory are three kinds of evidence, and each has its own words for «we do not know exactly» — l’hypothèse, la marge d’erreur, le biais. An English reader meets one trap early: une expérience is both an experience and an experiment, and only the sentence says which. Les résultats de l’expérience come from a laboratory, not from a life. Without these words every guess reads as a fact — in French as in English, only without your noticing.

The 19 lists

B2Psychology and learningPerception, memory, motivation, habit — the words for talking about your own thinking.50 words B2History and sourcesSource, testimony, dating, interpretation — the words for talking about the past without inventing it.50 words B2Statistics and figuresShare, mean, sample, spread — the words without which a figure in a text cannot be placed.50 words C1University and researchFrom enrolment to the day the thesis is defended in public.45 words C1Continuing professional developmentCourses, funding, qualifications — and who recognises them in the end.34 words C1Astronomy and spaceflightFrom the constellation to re-entry.40 words C2Book and libraryManuscript, edition, shelfmark — books as objects and as holdings.38 words C2AstrophysicsLight, distance, mass — what can be concluded from what arrives.41 words C2Family historyHow to find a person nobody remembers any more.27 words C2Archaeology and excavationTrench, layer, dating — and what a find can actually prove.33 words C2The history of technologyWhy the best solution is seldom the one that wins.32 words C2Archives and recordsWhat is kept, and why keeping it is a decision.21 words C2LibrarianshipOrdering, describing and keeping within reach.21 words C2DendrochronologyA tree, read as a calendar.31 words C2ThermodynamicsHeat, work and entropy, and why there is no way back.36 words C2CatalysisHow to speed a reaction up without using it up.25 words C2Genetics and inheritanceFrom the base to the population — and what a test result actually says.43 words C2PalaeographyReading old manuscripts, and knowing when they were written.25 words C2Science communicationHow a finding makes its way out of the discipline.25 words

Spread across the levels

The category runs across the levels — it is an area, not a difficulty. If you practise it, you can also choose a level at the top of the practice page and then get only the part that sits there.

Level	Words	Share
B2	152	23 %
C1	119	18 %
C2	396	59 %

Practise this category

Multiple choice and gaps, across all 19 lists and all 667 words. Whatever you get wrong comes back tomorrow.