What Do You Think of Our New Vocabulary Quizzes?

“It wasn’t a helicopter. And it wasn’t an airplane. It was a _____ between the two, with a curved hull, two small wings, and eight spinning rotors lined up across its nose and tail.”

Which one of these words — breakdown, chaos, cross or mix-up — best completes this sentence from a New York Times article on flying cars? Find out here.

This question is drawn from one of this fall’s interactive Vocabulary in Context quizzes, a new edition of which publishes every Thursday morning. Each takes the first several paragraphs of a fun New York Times article, drops out words, offers choices for the blanks, and gives more usage information about the correct answer. Each quiz then ends with a reading comprehension question that asks students, which short summary would you say best captures what the piece is about?

Below, we’ve collected all the quizzes published so far and sorted them into two rough categories: “more difficult” and “less difficult.” That’s because we’re trying to find the right balance — quizzes that are challenging, but not daunting — and we’d appreciate your help.

Let us know what you think, either by posting in the comments or by writing to [email protected]. Are they too hard? Too easy? Too long? Too short? Have you used them in your classroom? How have your students responded? And, as we continue these quizzes, are there specific Times articles you’d like to see us use?

Meanwhile, don’t forget our Vocabulary Video Challenge that runs through Jan. 12; our monthly Vocabulary Challenges, which are listed on this calendar, and, of course our Vocabulary column where you can find all of the above, plus our Word of the Day.

12 Quizzes

We’ve divided our quizzes into “less challenging” and “more challenging” based the difficulty level of the article each draws from, and on the scores of previous quiz-takers. But since reading is a complex activity that depends in part on background knowledge, your mileage may vary.

Two of the quizzes below — TikTok Food Stars and Cauliflower Fractals — also have related lesson plans.

Let us know what you think!