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<p>I do not consider Dark Knight’s posts to represent a list of “accusations.” He has posted a tremendous amount of information and shared what amounts to be a substantial amount of research on the hit and misses of vocabulary lists. I have a tremendous amount of respect for his efforts, especially since I did the same at a time when the “bread and butter” of the vocabulary lists fans was none other than the Barron’s 3500. I went as far as posting several lists on this site … because peoople liked them so much. Lists that included the 3500 words or other lists that offered a compilation of words that had appeared on the SAT in the past. </p>
<p>During the past five or six years, I have often explained my position on spending an excessive amount of time reviewing extensive lists of selected vocabulary lists. For some, it appeared helpful to review 70 times a list of 50 words. Considering the extremely poor record of appearing on FUTURE tests and the success in memorizing so many words, I thought that investing countless hours was indeed a VERY poor investment in time and efforts. I also explained that the difficulty of the test was, for the MOST part, not directly pegged to the difficulty of the vocabulary. ETS/TCB could write an extremely difficult and not use a single arcane word, but testing the deeper knowledge of secondary meanings of simple words. Examples? Think simple words such as low, rank, air, table … and thousands more. </p>
<p>However, my conclusion about the dedicated study of words did NOT come from the several mathematical analysis I made (as Dark Knight did) but from hundreds of examples of students who did NOT improve despite spending hundreds of hours on the study of word lists. Their problem? Every bit of gain yielded by recognizing 2, 3, 5, or even 15 words was dwarfed by lacking the proper techniques, the proper understanding of the test, and careless mistakes. </p>
<p>My conclusions remain the same --even after the removal of analogies: there are FEW students who will benefit from the study of hodge-podge lists of words. Those students come from the VERY low and the VERY high percentiles. The overwhelming majority of students should devote a VERY limited amount of time to the sterile study of lists, and NOT rely on a magical list of words. One should remember that we are all individuals. Our vocabulary has been built by experiences of close to two decades. Our reading comprehension, and our mastery of the finer elements of English are hardly based on pure vocabulary. Working towards improving positive approaches and developing good techniques SHOULD pay more dividends. </p>
<p>Fwiw, there are plenty of discussions on this subject in the archives on CC. Actually, you’ll find some linked in the sticky threads in this forum. </p>
<p>The decision to follow a certain path remains entirely individual. It is up to YOU to decide what works the best for YOU. Every bit of studying and practicing should help, but not everything will represent a wise investment. Most students I have known over the years do NOT have much time to waste. I maintain that the precious minutes that are available to most students should be reserved to practicing on official tests. </p>
<p>In MY opinion, adding 20-40 hours of dedicated practice should be much more fruitful than memorizing the latest “must read” list of words. </p>
<p>It’s a matter of choice.</p>
<p>PS This is for Dark Knight. What information should we learn from the words listed in your Post 4 and 5? Are those words supposed to have been acquired from one particular list? Are they supposed to represent an example of words that students might NOT know, short of reading a specific list? </p>
<p>For the record, most of those words should be trivial to the well-prepared student.</p>