<p>The argument of ruining the possibility of taking timed tests by reading old tests goes out of the window when one realizes the vast number of tests available. I doubt that many students look forward to work through a stack of 40 to 60 tests. And there are easily that many real tests available for the reading sections. </p>
<p>Again, you suggested I did not describe what “works” as an alternative to mindlessly memorize flash cards or lists. I gave you one approach out of a comprehensive set. And, as a small FYI, the mastery of vocabulary is just one element tested, and by far, hardly the most important in the reading section. </p>
<p>However, feel free to have an opinion different from mine. No biggie. </p>
<p>“There is nothing wrong with the way vocabulary is tested on the current SAT. This entire exercise is a public relations charade.”</p>
<p>I cannot agree more. The supposedly “obscure” words are read throughout college in virtually all institutions of Higher Ed. The vocabulary excuse is a mere smoke-screen. And yes, I did read the rather long article on 3/9 in the NYT. </p>
<p>Currently, the CR questions are pretty much “evidence-based,” so I’m not sure what Coleman means when he speaks of introducing that as if it’s a novelty. However, evidence-based <em>writing</em> would be a definite improvement.</p>
<p>" The supposedly “obscure” words are read throughout college in virtually all institutions of Higher Ed." Yes, that’s the problem. With a few exceptions, it’s not obvious to me which words they might be talking about. You see those words in college reading, top newspapers, etc.</p>
<p>Here’s a list of words. Are they obscure SAT words or not? I have no idea.
assuage
laudable
bulwark
galvanizing
candor
ineffable
hubris</p>
<p>I pulled them from two recent newspaper articles about the SAT, but these words weren’t being discussed as “SAT words”. </p>
<p>“If you check current postings from students who just took the SAT in recent months, you can find several who attribute most of their missed questions to not knowing vocab. I agree this doesn’t apply to every student, but it does help some.”</p>
<p>It seems like the point of the post above is that studying vocabulary helped certain students improve their SAT scores AND that the vocab studying was an effective method. @mathy if that’s your premise I strongly disagree. The only way to measure the effectiveness would be with an experiment through comparing two groups using different methods. Your comment is purely anecdotal. While the anecdote shows that studying vocal MAY be an effective way to study for the SAT it does nothing to settle the argument. I remain persuaded that studying vocan lists is relatively ineffective based on analysis by several posters at CC over a long period of time.</p>
<p>and I remain persuaded, as a widely experienced teacher, tutor, and more recently SAT tutor, that vocabulary lists per se, outside of context and outside of competency with sentence structure, are ineffective. However, NOT knowing frequently used words (in articles and essays likely of a level likely to appear on a standardized test and in college) will sink a student every time. It has mine. Also, the way that certain commercial test prep companies (I don’t belong to one) encourage memorization is also worthless because the definitions themselves are often ultra-brief and inadequate. There’s also a bizarre emphasis on rapid-response which often lacks understanding of the denotation or connotation. Mastering critical reading skills involves how to read, how to sort, how to interpret, AND the various meanings/uses of individual words.</p>
<p>The idea that cramming hundreds or thousands of vocabulary words in a few weeks or months is somehow going to make up for a lifetime of not reading is obviously silly. It also won’t magically teach skills like determining meaning from context. </p>
<p>But for the avid reader who is aiming for an 800, the vocab lists can close some gaps. One poster mentioned the word “necromancer” as an example that stumped some top students in their high school back in their day, The student whose reading tastes don’t include fantasy or teen vampire fiction might benefit from having seen that one on a vocab list. My daughter knows “necromancer” but her reading interests don’t include the category of “books about the marrying off of upper class girls”. Somehow she missed learning the word “debutante”. So these lists are helpful because even avid readers aren’t going to read extensively in every genre.</p>
<p>Also, learning words from context in reading is good, but sometimes it leaves students with a very fuzzy idea of the meaning. Seeing actual definitions (yes, they should be good definitions) can be very helpful. Subsequently, the student may recognize the vocab words in their reading, getting a much clearer idea of the definition and usage than by either means alone. </p>
<p>^^I think your points are valid but apply to only a very small subset of students. For example, a student who has learned everything they can from other study methods and still has time to do more work, will probably benefit from memorizing lists of words and seeing actual definitions.</p>
<p>While the point is valid, it probably creates more confusion than its worth given that so many students that read these threads will benefit more from other study methods.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t know with whom you’re arguing, but I’ve never advocated cramming, let alone “hundreds of thousands” of words in a limited time frame. A habit of reading material which itself includes sophisticated and elegant vocabulary, which the reader learns by way of that reading, is the best ultimate preparation, both for any standardized test and for college. Additional study of denotations is helpful for students who are skilled in the reading process itself but who may lack some advanced knowledge of particular words, or additional denotations of familiar words. I’ve also never suggested learning by context alone, but only because the students who don’t know the words are the same students who rush through the process of reading without knowing how to decipher context. (Typically, they’ve missed the clues, the comparisons, or the contrasts.) Students who understand that reading is not about “guessing,” let alone wildly and irrationally, do well with context.</p>
<p>@epiphany, I’m arguing with the people who say that there is always a better use of SAT prep time than learning vocab. I think this is true for the majority of students, who probably aren’t going to spend much time prepping and aren’t already scoring over 700. They can probably gain more points by reaching full mastery of the math content and by practicing tests and learning from the answers, making sure they understand the types of questions, etc. Kids with more time and energy to commit would probably be better off regularly reading high level materials than taking endless practice tests. If they don’t have such a good vocab, they will be finding plenty of new words there, and they probably need to strengthen their reading skills. This is also a good practice for the kid who reads widely and hopes to score 800, but such kids will be learning a lot fewer new words by doing so (because they already have a large vocabulary). Therefore it’s nice to have a supplemental approach of focused vocab prep. </p>
<p>If we imagine reading material that includes one “SAT word” per page, a non-reader can read 100 pages, boost their reading skills, and hopefully learn 100 new words. But a reader may already know 80% of those words, so they’ll learn 20 new words. The boost to their reading skills is also probably less than for the non-reader because they are already strong. They will benefit more than the non-reader will from the efficiency of being able to skim though a list of 1000 words and pick out the 200 they don’t know for study. </p>
<p>Considering the hubris of the College Board, these changes are a laudable effort to assuage the concerns of educators and to galvanize admissions committees. But with candor, I believe most of the SAT vocab is ineffably obscure…especially “bulwark.”</p>
<p>Again, and again, you seem determined to establish that learning vocabulary is one and the same as learning words through memorizing a … list of words. For the record, what some of us are saying is that a strong vocabulary DOES play a role in earning a high verbal score, but yet that acquiring a few “last” arcane words is highly overrated, and that especially hoping to pick those words through a pre-established list of words is an almost hopeless exercise. And an exercise that has an incredibly poor return on investment. This would be different if the SAT were to release a series of books and confirm that ALL words tested are in those books. A student might cover his or her voacabulary base by reading and analyzing all such books. However, list of words simply do NOT do that. They represent an entirely idle realm of speculation. Simply stated, they are a poke in the dark and incomplete in their suggested definitions. </p>
<p>What is the biggest problem with lists of words that have been compiled over the years? While they are in some cases culled from the history of the SAT (think Direct Hits) in other cases they simply represent a hodgepodge of various sources, including (read Barron’s) the GRE. From the thousands of words listed, very few are bound to appear on the next SAT, and when they appear they either do NOT play a major role in finding the correct answer or were rather pedestrian. </p>
<p>The reality is that in almost every case, a well-prepared student might get away with NOT knowing the precise definition of the word if relying on the proper techniques to eliminate wrong answers or relying on a good graps of prefixes and suffixes or latin roots. The SAT does not ask a student to define words such as necromancer or leviathan; it uses them in a particular concept. And that is a HUGE difference. </p>
<p>For the record, I believe that you are absolutely wrong in your conclusions about students in the 650-700 range who want to increase their scores. In every case I have known, the issue has never been an inadequate vocabulary, but a series of misconception about the format and scope of the questions, and a lack of correct techniques to identify the correct answer. The biggest problems are often related to too much deep-thinking and inferences. </p>
<p>My bottom line is quite simple. Any student who is prepared to go through a stack of 70 words per week for a full year (getting that that infamous 3500 words) would be MUCH better off dedicating the same time to other duties. And only a fraction of that time should be devoted to preparing for the SAT. </p>
<p>@xiggi “Any student who is prepared to go through a stack of 70 words per week for a full year …” A full year? You’ve got to be kidding. She studied vocab for about 10 weeks over the summer, and I can assure you, she wasn’t killing herself over it. “especially hoping to pick those words through a pre-established list of words is an almost hopeless exercise”. Hopeless? She knew every single word on her SAT test. Worked for me too, and I took the SAT with vocab-heavy analogies.</p>
<p>As I’ve repeatedly mentioned, the avid reader doesn’t need to learn 3500 words. If you’re starting from there, you’d be best off reading, and you certainly aren’t the student I’m talking about. The avid reader already knows 2800 of those words, or at least sort-of-knows them from having seen them somewhere, and simply seeing the definitions, they can very quickly solidify their knowledge of a lot of words very fast
. </p>
<p>I’m with mathyone here. My experience is with students in Asia, few of whom are native English speakers, and I’ve found (over 12 years and thousands of students, including dozens of 2400 scorers) that vocab alone will get a kid from 400s to 650.</p>
<p>Yes, except that Mathyone does NOT speak about the same group of students. The example of foreign students with extremely poor command of English (as in 400 scores) is quite different from the conversations about MOST students, and totally different from the group Mathyone describes as kids knowing 80 percent of the Barrons’ list and needing “just” a refresher for words they might have seen before or words they should be able to decipher from the context. </p>
<p>And, worth repeating for the nth time, the issue is not about the value of learning the vocabulary that tends to be tested on the SAT but about the MANNER one proceeds. The debate is NOT about learning the words (and how it can help one getting 250 points from a base of 400 or getting the last 100 points from 700) but a decision to use flashcards and sterile lists of words versus … learning words in the appropriate context and in the most effective way. Again, one can accomplish all that could be find in lists of words and MORE with a different approach. </p>
<p>Some here are determined to confuse the issue by, in a way, positing that learning vocabulary is through the memorization of pre-established lists of words. </p>
<p>Worth repeating here … even the best of the lists (if there is anything like that) will only yield a minuscule numbers of “hits” and THAT part has been demonstrated over and over again. The real problem of the lists of words as they exist is that they remain entirely speculative and that they contain a majority of words that will never be tested. </p>
<p>One last reality … if all a student needed to do to improve his of her reading score was to memorizing words, we would see an explosion in the scores. And that has simply not happened! </p>
<p>So I’m an upcoming freshman, Class of 2017. I will be the first year who takes the new SAT. Since this will be released in Spring of 2016 (my junior year), would the PSAT be the old version?</p>
<p>How would colleges compare between the students who choose to take the old SAT in December 2015, compared to those who take the newer version? Would the older version impress colleges more, if the score is high? Would they require us all to take the newer version?</p>
<p>@sjwon3789—I don’t think any of us know the answer to the question in your second paragraph, but I am planning on having my 9th grader take the current format fall of his Jr year. That would have been my plan regardless of the exam design changes. If we learn that students are achieving higher scores on the new format, then there will still be time to sit for the exam late spring of Jr year.</p>
<p>As to the PSAT, my understanding is that the PSAT the Class of '17 will take as their NMSQT will be the new format even though the new SAT will not be administered until March of that same school year. So, if you are someone who planned to take the PSAT as both a sophomore and a Jr, you will enjoy two different formats. Unfortunately, only the score from your Jr PSAT can be used for the purpose of NMSQT.</p>
<p>As far as the second question goes, this is not an issue you need to stress over. Simply plan to take the test that ffits your schedule the best. My recommendation, which does not depend on the old versus new test, is to prepare the best you can between your sophomore and junior year. Armed with your first PSAT, prepare for the October test in earnest. Your preparation, which ideally should take place in the summer before the junior year, should be sufficient to present both the PSAT and the next SAT from October to the next summer. Again, ideally, you should try take of the SAT in your junior year and keep the Senior year as free of testing as feasible, except for the APs. In the worst case, you still have the summer before your summer year to present the SAT (or the ACT) in the first sessions. The reality is that you will have plenty of pressures with applications and school work (your Fall senior grades are important) that it is best to be done with the standardized tests. </p>
<p>What’s really hilarious to me is this: Has anyone yet figured out how Coleman’s revised essay segment will NOT widen opportunity for more students? In fact, it will narrow it, in three ways:</p>
<p>(1) How to read, especially the more sophisticated kinds of writing that one encounters on the SAT (vs. the smaller range of reading a typical student is exposed to today) is practiced to a more rigorous degree in private schools, not public – and for a variety of reasons. Students from private schools and wealthy public school districts are given assignments which demand fairly deep understanding and analysis of reading (fiction and non-). The training ground is there, not in a non-magnet, underperforming urban public.</p>
<p>(2) How to write, especially the “evidence-based writing” that Coleman is determined to include in the new format, is much more often assigned, and much more often rigorously evaluated and corrected, in wealthy educational settings. We’re talking here analytical writing, including comparative exercises, not “Get in a group and dramatize Act III, Scene I of Romeo and Juliet.” We’re talking about students who have had enough practice with recognizing their own bad writing from their own good writing that they’re more likely to produce “B” level work on a cold test than “C” or “D” level. My public school students are not getting sufficient practice in that. Result: that will ensure that more ambitious families – but only those families who can afford to – will seek out private tutoring for such training.</p>
<p>(3) Back to the vocabulary debate. Even a poor kid can memorize stacks of cards. However, what a poor kid cannot do is get new parents. The single most predictive measure of academic success is the home environment, because that is where language is not only learned but practiced. Thus, parents who routinely use high-level English vocabulary in their children’s presence raise children with a similar vocabulary proficiency. The home is a school, folks. And well-educated homes (mostly “wealthier”) will continue to have an advantage in standardized testing.</p>
<p>Institutions and agencies keep trying to engage in social engineering, but unless you dumb down the test so much that everyone can pass (and the test therefore loses all value), there will continue to be local effects of “unequal” opportunity.</p>