<p>barron list...
I got through about 1200 words a day(cost me about 10 hours) and finished it in 3 days</p>
<p>It is a very tough work....</p>
<p>and how many did you actually remember....</p>
<p>If you memorize the words (or you think you do) you only know their definition and use them on your essays in the wrong context. You try to sound smart and excessively use them without knowing how stupid you sound. </p>
<p>My advice is learn the words for the sake of yourself, not just for the SAT unless your not going to speak English after you finish taking the SAT. (which doesn't make sense)</p>
<p>Andrea ... When I went through the Barron's, I said I did 800 words a day in an earlier post on this thread, but after I went through all 3500 words I found 100 that I didn't know, and about half of those were words I could use in context but didn't really know the true meaning of. So honestly it wasn't like I (or galois (theory?), I'm guessing) memorized thousands of words a day.</p>
<p>8parks is correct that if you memorize defs through vocab builders you can retain a general sense of their meaning for perhaps a short period of time. I think that's probably enough to be of some aid on the SAT. If you want to know how to use a word in context, it's best to see examples of sentences or passages with that word. When I was learning Barron's vocab, for every word I did not know, I literally googled that word and read the first three non-dictionary websites that used that word in context. Also I heavily used Merriam Webster's 'Word of the Day' series, for which about 75% of the 100 words I studied were featured. For each word of the day, three to four paragraphs including that word are given. Really try to <em>learn</em> your vocab -- don't just passively memorize a three word definition or you will not know how to use the word.</p>
<p>amb3r, I think your strategy was a good one, especially googling the words for example sentences.</p>
<p>Another cool source of example sentences is at corpus.byu.edu/bnc. A BYU professor put together a search engine that allows you to search 100 million words of published text for example sentences. What's more, you can choose to search only in fiction, only in academic writing, only in science, only in history, or whatever. The site also tells you how many times the word occurs in all 100 million words, which tells you something about how important the word is. That site is at corpus.byu.edu/bnc.</p>
<p>He did the same thing with 70 years of Time magazine. I like example sentences from Time magazine because I find that the Time archives include pretty much all the words I can think of, but at the same time, the general reading level of Time magazine is not so hard, so the example sentences tend to be clear. You can use this Time search engine to search by decade, which is kind of fun if you are a word geek: you can see which words have gotten more popular over time and which have fallen out of use. That site is at corpus.byu.edu/time.</p>
<p>(How to use the search engine: Once you do a search for the word on these two sites, you have to click on the results in order to see the example sentences. For instance, if you search for the word "abandon," you get a results box that displays the word "abandon" and the number 1294 (the total number of times the word occurs in the whole database). If you click on the word "abandon" in the results box, you see the examples display at the bottom of the page. If you click on one of the three-digit code at the beginning of an example sentence, it expands so that you can see the word in more context. It usually gives you two or three sentences of context.)</p>
<p>omg..800 a day ...how on earth did you achieve that ? can u still remember the words?</p>
<p>FreeRice.com</p>
<p>Have fun, learn SAT vocab and feed the hungry!</p>
<p>Make flashcards ... and along with the definition on the back, also but PICTURES or other MNEMONICS! It helps so much, and I was amazed at my progress! I was able to plow through 250 words in about one hour and RETAIN all the words I had learned.</p>
<hr>
<p>The mnemonics can be a picture/word combo:</p>
<p>ex) SURFEIT surfers: draw a wave with a lot of people surfing on it (surfeit means a surplus)</p>
<p>ex) arrogate: The arrogant aristocrats arrogated the grain (draw a corresponding picture, etc)</p>
<p>They can be in a foreign language:</p>
<p>ex) limpid = limpiar (limpid means clean and limpiar is the verb "to clean" in Spanish)</p>
<p>Don't be afraid of making them lame! In fact, the lamer they are, the more you will remember!</p>
<p>well, if you know some of the words already, 800 words a day is not that many.</p>
<p>^ I agree. </p>
<p>I managed to learn 300 words a day (300 words I didn't know! That's out of 800 total too, because the other 500 I already knew). 300 words in one day takes about 1 hour on every 50 words.+ some after time for the harder words. So... 6-7 or maybe 8 hours if the words are REALLY tough.</p>
<p>(I will never remember what levee means, I just CAN'T)</p>
<p>i think that means he skipped over the words he already knew. then 800 a day would be possible</p>
<p>try freerice.com it is helpful</p>