<p>If you studied 600 words for the SAT and when the day comes, most of the words you still don't know, are on the critical reading section?</p>
<p>How bad is to cry during the SATs?</p>
<p>a friend passed out during the Latin SAT II.
It was kind of funny.</p>
<p>shimshimhey, that’s why it’s good to study roots (Latin & Greek) instead of words.</p>
<p>^Yeah, studying roots helps more. UNLESS you have a killer memory.</p>
<p>Frankly, I find memorizing word lists more than a little bit pathetic. Just read books that use a wide range of vocabulary, and try to incorporate more obscure words into your daily vernacular.</p>
<p>I never memorized a single word for the SATs, and got 780/760 on reading/writing. Memorizing words is not necessary.</p>
<p>My advice…just read books. ANY books. Just read them!!! I read everything from Gossip Girl to Anna Karenina, and I got 79 on PSAT for CR. So memorizing those words doesn’t help. I’m pretty sure of it.</p>
<p>memorizing words does help, but only so much. You have to know how they change meanings, how they’re used, what contexts etc. and that only comes from reading, or extensive usage of a word.</p>
<p>Reading is more useful. And the voc. emphasis is overrated - really. All those vocabulary flash cards are useless (but good money makers) for the test… it’s good if you want to improve your own word usage, of course, but the time to study all those words with only a small percentage of them showing up on the test is hardly worth the effort. </p>
<p>So yeah, I suggest you get hooked on books.</p>
<p>I cannot bring myself to believe that people actually drill vocabulary for this test. It just seems cartoonish to me.</p>
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<p>I was under the same impression until I realized that this type of behavior is encouraged in the PR prep courses and most review books. It’s pretty pathetic. Studying roots or being an avid reader seems like the only way.</p>
<p>I memorized all 500 of the Princeton Review words, and I got all the vocab questions on the SAT right. I also recall several vocab questions from the readings, and writing sections (questions that I knew I wouldn’t be able to answer without vocab knowledge). However, it didn’t help my reading skills, and I just wound up with a 650.</p>
<p>I didn’t miss a single vocab word either, and yet I never ever studied vocab (or, more accurately, anything on the SAT).</p>
<p>I really do not get how reading helps, ok you read the sentence and you see that huge vocab word in the middle of that sentence.. What do you do? I just move on to the next sentence..</p>
<p>i think my brain works very SAT/testing-way</p>
<p>the day before i took the test, i read over the 20+ page vocab list from the princeton book, the barron’s book, and the kaplan book (since they all had different words, lol). that must’ve been like 10000000000000000 words. and if you tested me on any of the words, i wouldn’t have known the meanings. but if you hand me an SAT anwer form, it was jut like everything “clicked” and i knew exactly what to put down. i was very surprised when i studied for one day and got an 80, while last year i didn’t study at all and got like a 65</p>
<p>“I really do not get how reading helps, ok you read the sentence and you see that huge vocab word in the middle of that sentence.. What do you do? I just move on to the next sentence..”</p>
<p>HAHA THATS WHAT I DO</p>
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<p>Reading regularly exposes you to a more advanced set of vocabulary that you wouldn’t normally obtain from conversational speaking. When you are reading (real literature, not sappy teen drama novels or similar) and see a “big” word in the middle of sentence, you can rely on context clues to explain the definition. This subconsciously enhances your vocabulary without actually studying every word on the page. Even if you make a note of challenging words and look them up later helps too.</p>
<p>^…agreed, I have rarely looked up words, but I’ve been reading my whole life…you get the “gist” of a word, which is more than the flash cards could ever do. You get the nuances, the double meanings, etc. Also how a word is used in context, as opposed to straight definition.</p>