<p>Isn't it pointless to sit and study SAT vocabulary words for hours (considering that of the 500+ SAT vocab words you may know, only about 5-10 will actually show up on the SATs...) </p>
<p>What do you guys think? </p>
<p>I personally find it absurd when I consider the payoff (yes, I know that 20 pts. is a good payoff for getting 1-2 extra fill-ins right on the Reading Section... but come on.. are you serious?)</p>
<p>I'm going to be taking my SATs in May, and I figure that I should concentrate more on Math and Writing rather than sitting on hours end studying vocabulary that won't even be on the test. </p>
<p>I'm a fairly decent reader that reads a lot of books and textbooks (which I think will serve way better than sitting down and looking at a hit-list.)</p>
<p>For example... I know these words from reading...</p>
<p>It depends… if you’re really never going to miss more than one or two SC questions, and you don’t mind losing the points, then don’t bother studying. On the other hand, if your vocab is that good, then it shouldn’t take too much time to go through a list and pick out the words you don’t know and memorize just those.</p>
<p>You could also just make yourself familiar with a word list without actually memorizing word-for-word definitions.</p>
<p>To study for hours? Yes. To study maybe 30 seconds a day? No.</p>
<p>Seriously, how long does it take to memorize a few new words? Less than a minute. Who knows, doing this over a long period of time could boost your score significantly.</p>
<p>If you miss 10 SC questions, that automatically drops you to around a 670, assuming you don’t miss a single passage-based question. Miss 5 passage questions and you drop to 620, 10 passage questions wrong will give you a 580. So unless you’re really good at CR passages (or content with high 5s - low 6s), you’re going to need to do better on SC.</p>
<p>Vocab memorization doesn’t have to be as laborious as you may think. Carry five or ten flashcards in your pocket with you every day and pull them out whenever you’re not occupied; at lunch, at the bus stop, etc. Once you get started, you’ll be surprised at how fast you can memorize words. Glancing at words every couple hours is a much better strategy than just sitting down and trying to memorize them all at once - you brain needs time to process them.</p>
<p>just spread it out its not bad
i went through the yellow flash cards in the back of the barrons sat prep book and downloaded some mp3s of tough vocab words. in addition i got direct hits and just flipped through it. i only missed 1 sentence completion on the jan sat so that means anyone can ace it… i had a pretty bad vocab before.</p>
<p>very interesting topic. I’ve seen people such as Mystery tutor & Gramatix advise against studying any list vs other test prep companies who encourage to do so. So now I’m kinda in a predicament</p>
<p>Well,I spent 6 months to went through the whole Barrons 3500 mini dictionary.I took the SAT in Jan without reviewing the words after i have almost forgotten all of them.I scored 600.Now,I am proud to say I know all of them,and I score ~740-750 on practice tests.You tell me if it is pointless to study vocab or not.
And if this mystery tutor was such a big thing,his website wouldnt be shut down</p>
<p>My son’s Mosaic College Prep tutor taught him that vocab is a hard thing to justify studying for the SAT… great for life, but the reward you get for ingesting words you won’t necessarily see are low. SC questions make up about 1/3 of CR questions, which make up 1/3 of the test. So they’re only 1/9 of the questions on the test. But assuming you already know 2/3 of the words you’ll see, now you’re down to 1/3 of the 1/9…</p>
<p>In other words, 1/27 of the questions on the test are questions with vocab you don’t know. Spend far more than 1/27 of your SAT prep time on them, you might be shooting yourself in the foot.</p>
<p>It really comes down to whether the test taker can infer a deeper meaning in the vocab drills. If roots, prefixes and suffixes are at the heart of his or her thought process, the work could pay off. But in my opinion, someone who has the intellectual curiosity and drive to spend 6 months learning vocab is probably someone who has a better shot at scoring the mid 700s</p>
<p>True, but 1/27 of 1800 total points (2400-600) still comes out to around 70 points. So it does make a difference. In addition, a good vocabulary is necessary to do well on the reading passages. Tough words show up all the time in passages, questions, and answer choices.</p>
<p>You’re much better off reading a lot about subjects you like. Besides, some colleges ask for or accept lists of books you read in high school–it would like pretty shabby to only have test-prep books on your list.</p>
<p>it may be that there are a core set of words that come up enough so they’re worth knowing. In this case I would at least memorize a good chunk of (preferably) a reputable vocab list such as direct hits, pr hit parade, or rocket review.</p>
<p>I personally used pr hit parade, and got the spark notes wotd text for a couple of months, and I think I will probably only miss one sc on the march sat.</p>
<p>I’d say just stuying for a few hours of vocab for a consistent period of time can only help. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, or in this case smarter. :)</p>
<p>I don’t know about you guys, but studying vocabulary helps me with my reading. The less words I stumble over, the faster I can digest higher level material. The faster I digest higher level material, the more I get out of reading.</p>