Most vocabulary study is carried out through reading. A number of assessments of reading recognition of vocabulary were discussed in the previous chapter: multiple choice techniques, matching, picture-cued identification, cloze techniques, guessing the meaning of a word in context, etc. The major techniques used to assess vocabulary are (a) defining and (b) using a word in a sentence. The latter is the more authentic, but even that task is constrained by a contrived situation in which the test-taker, usually in a matter of seconds, has to come up with an appropriate sentence, which may or may not indicate that the test-taker “knows” the word.