<p>I'm an incoming junior. My vocabulary is pretty bad considering I came to the U.S. in 2002. I struggle with a good amount of words whenever I'm reading and what not. If I want a good verbal score; lets say at least a 650, do you guys think it's possible if I study hard? Any tips on memorizing vocab? What were your experiences? Any information would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>Sometimes you have to be lucky, first time around I got a 680, second time around I got a 770. I just knew all the words an got every complete the sentence question right, both times I didn’t study vocab.</p>
<p>What are you scoring right now? </p>
<p>Generally speaking, get one of the famous SAT vocab lists - Direct Hits and Barrons are well liked on these forums - and make flash cards. Whenever your bored, there isn’t anything good on T.V., just before you go to bed, or whatever, just pick up your flash cards and sift through them and your vocab will improve in no time.</p>
<p>I’m guessing your chinese from your username?
But yeah, use direct hit (though I personally like barron).</p>
<p>I learned 400 words from direct hits in about 10 hours of total studying time. I don’t mean just skimming, I actually KNOW them… Just keep going over the words and try to come up with little tricks. For example, the word execrable has the word “crab” in it… When I see this word, I pretend that I hate crabs so that I can remember this word means extremely bad…It sounds really stupid but it works.</p>
<p>Contrary to what a lot of people say, I think vocabulary is one of the most important things tested on the SAT. Having an expansive vocabulary can not only direct you to a higher CR score, but also assist you in your school work and day-to-day activities. For example, few, if any, words stump me when I’m doing a newspaper current event assignment for my AP Gov. class. For all practical purposes, you should try to go through both volumes of the Direct Hits series and if possible, the SparkNotes 1000 list you can easily find online. If you can memorize around 50 words per day, you’ll be done with all three lists in, give or take, a month. </p>
<p>On the topic of flashcards–</p>
<p>Flashcards can definitely be of assistance when you study for the SAT, but it’s much too time and energy consuming to make these little buggers. I’ve found it to be much more helpful to carry around SAT lists in my school binder and take a look once-in-a-while when you have free time, whether it be on the bus ride to school or during a boring class lecture.</p>
<p>D2 usually gets close to 100% on her vocab quizzes at school but she found some words from direct hits that she didn’t know. So far she only memorizes 50 new vocab words but I don’t know how hard she applies herself. I think there are some words that are very similar but with suttle differences between them, for example, oppression, repression, suppression. It could be confusing to non-native learner.</p>