<p>Yeah im pretty confused on how to prepare. I have the 11 practice tests from princeton review and 10 from the bluebook. I asked my SAT teacher how i should prepare for it and i asked if i should read alot. She said that i should just memorize vocab (im assuming shes gonna teach my class the tactics for the reading passages). She then told me of a story of this kid from Africa came to the united states when he was really young and scored a perfect score by just memorizng vocab and i assume doing practice tests.</p>
<p>So main question how should i prepare? Vocabulary and doing practice tests, or vocabulary reading magazines and practice tests?</p>
<p>I think he’s right, I’m an international, so my english isn’t impaired by a daily using which is the main reason of a very low average score in the US. In other word, I’ve just learn standards of english writing. Now what prevent me from having a perfect score it’s the vocabulary which can be very heavy to learn.
I don’t know if you’ve already tried to learn another language to master it nearly as a native but it takes a lot (A LOT) of time.
Practicing helps you for mastering your vocabulary and giving a sense in a particular context. Moreover being used to read english documents allows you to read faster (saving time is very important)</p>
<p>In a way she’s right. But simply sitting down and looking at vocab words and their definitions probably isn’t the most practical way to study vocab. I do think that doing lots of SAT practice will help, even if it’s just looking at sentence completion questions, figuring out what all the vocab means in each question, and understanding how each word is used.</p>
<p>Like you said, your teacher will probably give tips on how to do better on the passage questions.</p>
<p>Depends on your individual context. I read a 1000 word SAT book in sophomore year and did some flashcards but other than that I didn’t really do anything to prepare for vocabulary. When I was preparing for the SAT, I focused all my time on improving my reading comprehension score because I felt it was a more efficient use of time to prep for the test (17 vocab questions versus however many reading comprehension). I ended up getting an 800, but I also put on the test that a woman who is skilled in many sciences is a racist. At the same time, my friend (who’s way smarter than me) got destroyed by the vocab and missed 4 questions on them.</p>
<p>It certainly helps to know more words, but it’s by no means necessary, you have an allowance of usually getting 1 or 2 problems wrong and still being able to get an 800.</p>
<p>A solid vocabulary is very important. However, I personally think it’s hard to just memorize vocab. Instead, I bought the Princeton Review’s SAT vocab apps for the iPod. There are two volumes of 200 words each, and when I took the test, quite a few words on there appeared on the test.
Figure out your weakness on the reading passages. Is it the function, global, detail, vocab in context, or inference questions? I am weak on global and inference questions, so I practiced those especially. To figure out which questions are which, I used the Kaplan SAT book, which lists the categories and strategies. Reading passages are more important than vocabulary.
Lastly, read quality material- newspapers such as the New York Times (you can read online) or novels. You can read what you think is interesting- almost anything will improve your abilities to process information- but the language and diction on the test is very formal.
Good luck, and don’t stress too much! It’s only a test.</p>
<p>To ace the CR portion, I recommend just reading a lot. A lot. You’ll improve your vocab and your reasoning skills. It’s not necessary to cram for CR - obviously, practice helps, but it can only take you so far.</p>
<p>Definitely use prep books, I recommend Collegeboard’s. When it comes to vocab, it is definitely a good idea to memorize the most frequent words on there. However, since there are always surprises, you also have to learn how to judge the meaning of a word write on the spot. Obviously start by getting rid of any answers you know don’t belong, narrow it down to two or three, then make your best guess. I would also suggest taking it multiple times because I found the first time I took it to be much harder than the second (my test scores reflect that).</p>
<p>I would heavily disagree with your teacher. I hate memorizing vocab and I’m awaiting my score (hopefully 2300+) but I’ll update tomorrow morning at 5 AM. LOL</p>