<p>in your opinion, what's the best book/set of flashcards on the market that can be used to study for the vocabulary section of the SAT?</p>
<p>sparknotes 1000 word list</p>
<p>c'mon..........78 views and only one response? please post ur opinion to my question!</p>
<p>Word Smart rocks.</p>
<p>Vote for wordsmart from me.</p>
<p>i saw this book in barnes and noble called simon's saga.........it looks like a new and innovative approach to memorizing sat words......can anyone comment on their experience with it?</p>
<p>I print my own cards from my own vocab lists (based on things like frequency on past exams) onto perforated sheets of paper at the tutoring center where I am director. I actually never found a truly super-awesome set of cards, so I automated a way to make my own for my students. But if you can find a set of flash cards based on high-frequency words from previous exams, that would be the one to get. </p>
<p>I was obsessive enough at one point to type all the word lists I could find into a massive Excel file, rank them against all the words from the Blue Book, and calculate percentages.</p>
<p>Word Smart from PR is pretty good as far as matching the words on the test--better than SparkNotes. It's probably the best collection of SAT Vocab on the market except for hit-parade type lists. So if it's available in flash cards now, it's the way to go.</p>
<p>As people on CC have previously suggested, the best lists for the SAT are usually high-frequency lists based on past exams--things like the Princeton Review hit parade, which you can find in many of their SAT books, or like the Barrons list of 600+ words that have most frequently appeared on the SAT in the past. The convenient thing about this fact, actually, is that 600+ is a manageable number of words to memorize.</p>
<p>Kudos to you for looking for pre-printed flash cards, too; I think that's definitely the way to go. It saves huge amounts of time.</p>
<p>on adam robinsons rocket review website he reccomends a book called word power made easy. anyone heard of it? (it's kind of interesting how he didn't reccomend word smart, his own book)</p>
<p>Word Power Made Easy is available from Amazon, although only from secondary sellers (i.e., Amazon does not carry it; they only link to other people that do.) It may be out of print but it looks easy to obtain used.</p>
<p>It has a five-star rating. What's more, 39 out of 43 individual reviewers gave it five stars (two gave it four stars, one person gave it one star because she was accidentally reviewing the wrong book, and one gave it one star because he didn't believe in memorizing vocabulary). This kind of unanimity (SAT word, heh) is unusual. </p>
<p>It seems to take the keyword approach to learning prefixes, suffixes, and roots. In other words, they focus on only about one hundred (presumably carefully chosen) words, learning the roots, prefixes, and suffixes of all of them. They teach you to understand the parts of all these words very well so that you can apply them to guessing other words.</p>
<p>It strikes me as a possibly very powerful approach and I am ordering it to look at right away. If you have ten bucks to blow on a risk, I'd get yourself a copy and see if it's helpful. If it's absolutely fantastic when I get it, I'll try to repost here.</p>
<p>P.S. It is not out of print. You can buy it directly from Barnes and Noble online (<a href="http://www.bn.com)%5B/url%5D">www.bn.com)</a> for $6.29. This means that you could also get an actual B&N store to order it in for you, in which case you wouldn't have to pay shipping.</p>
<p>"30 days to a more powerful vocabulary" it's by the same author as word power made easy. (norman lewis) try reading magazines like newsweek and times</p>
<p>bump.................................................</p>
<p>more comments please.........has anyone had experience w/both word smart and word power made easy?</p>
<p>Just got Word Power Made Easy.</p>
<p>It looks excellent, although those of you in the high 600s and 700s are going to find the words themselves pretty easy. But the presentation of roots--and the explanation of how the words come from the roots--looks top-notch. My first impression is that the words themselves look great for the SAT, unless you already know most of them, as many of you will. </p>
<p>If your score is in the 500s and you think that vocabulary is keeping your score down, I would definitely buy this book and study it carefully. If your score is in the 600s or 700s but you want a good, intentional well-designed roots curriculum, based on SAT-type words, I would buy it--just know that you'll primarily be learning new roots, not new words.</p>
<p>In response to your question, mnsophmore, Word Smart and WPME are really, really different books. WS has a lot more words and not much etymology, and the words are significantly more difficult. WPME looks really good on etymology and its words are likely to appear on the SAT (although you may know them already), and is an excellent resource for learning to <em>think about</em> words. (Also, I haven't forgotten your PM--that was you right? I'll be on that directly.)</p>
<p>Just study Gruber's roots, prefixes and suffixes, and enjoy your 800 CR.</p>
<p>Essential 500 words and direct hits volume 1 and 2.</p>