<p>I'm taking the SAT in May ...which means I'll be on a regimented study plan. My question is...is memorizing 300-3500 words in time for the SAT actually worth it? There's no true way of determining whether ANY of those words will actually end up on the test and let's be honest, it seems like overkill.But, like many of the people on college confidential, I want to get a good Critical Reading score and I'm pretty good at the reading analysis to say the least. It's the sentence completion that leads to my point deduction (not by much..but I'd still like to get a 700+ like anyone else)
To those of you that have taken the SAT or have prepared for it, what would you advise for doing well on the sentence completion section?</p>
<p>You have to for a good score unless you have read novels since you were a kid. I didn’t study vocab and it’s the reason that I have a bad critical reading score. I got 3-4 questions wrong on the passage questions and around 5 wrong on vocabulary. If I had my vocab down I would have gotten 770+ on CR. Instead I have 680.</p>
<p>Yes, you need to study vocabulary. But don’t just memorize a list- use flash cards, and if you don’t want to make your own there are some online, in addition to vocabulary apps for the iPod.</p>
<p>@awesomegirl</p>
<p>I am not sure what your exact situation is with your SAT preparation, but as a high school senior, I would be happy to share my own experience. I tried to do SAT classes and private tutoring, and found that none of it really worked (my first SAT was 660CR 650M 720W). Instead, I simply bought the SAT official study guide and did a section each day as preparation. I found that doing this I could train my brain to think in the sort of way that the SAT requires, and ended up doing pretty well. I got a 2340 (800CR 740M 800W, 10e). From what I have seen, the vocab on the SAT is just random. You don’t know what words are going to be on there so I see studying vocab as a waste of time. You either know them or you don’t, and hopefully you have seen the words at some point in novels you’ve read over the years and have a vague idea of what they mean. However, I also took Latin for six years, and that may have helped me.</p>
<p>Study vocab. On a practice test a year ago, I missed like 5 sentence completions and almost all the words were alien to me. This January, after studying ~400 vocab words, I got a 790. (the curve was really harsh so on a normal curve I would have gotten 800)</p>
<p>Personally, I didn’t study vocab, and I’m not a big reader either. I got a 790 on CR. What helped me is my 5 years of Latin though. I mainly employed the positive or negative word technique and tried to pick out the wrong answers. I think if you just reason through the sentences and mark them up with the context clues you should be good. To me, memorizing words seemed to be an inefficient method of studying. Use that time instead to practice tests with focus on sentence completions. You just have to attack the SAT, not memorize. Just my opinion- I’m not an expert.</p>
<p>LOL @ the two people saying not to study, are the one’s who took Latin. </p>
<p>I’m just using Direct Hits and reviewing some roots, prefixes, and suffixes. I think it is worth it, but I will find out in March.</p>
<p>It helps if you can learn vocab words through something you enjoy. I learned a lot of my vocabulary from video games (kingdomofloathing if you’re interested) and reading people’s arguments on forum boards.</p>
<p>Scored 800 but got 1 comprehension and 1 vocab question wrong (and 1 on the experimental wrong - but seriously who describes music as being malevolent)</p>
<p>I studied 500 some odd vocab words one summmer… like before freshman year. I think I retained around 200-300 of them. I score decently in the CR (usually 700s).</p>
<p>em let me see
i usually mem 10/day
so …</p>
<p>It’s definitely worth it. Use direct hits though.</p>
<p>I didn’t memorize any vocab and I got a 2350 … and the 750 was in MATH :(</p>
<p>As others said - USE DIRECT HITS!!!
If you don’t read much (like me), studying vocabulary definitely helps.</p>
<p>study Latin ha ha:) I missed 1 on the PSAT Reading as a freshman from vocab (and another on the passages) mostly because in only 2 years of Latin I could figure out what most of the words meant:) I would recommend just looking at basic Latin (if you want… your basic vocab helps out immensely if you want to, but not at all necessary but fun if you are at all interested in the language…) and before the real SAT I will probably go over some vocab???</p>
<p>No! Don’t memorize vocabulary words. That’s a waste of time. Instead, memorize roots, prefixes and suffixes, and how to tell the part of speech. (If the word they present you with is an adjective, the synonym will also be an adjective, so you can eliminate any other part of speech.) It’s much more efficient!</p>
<p>Learning these vocabulary words will help you in general. Unlike other parts of the SAT, This mode of studying is actually somewhat useful.</p>
<p>But please, don’t be silly about it. Don’t kill trees with flash cards, and don’t focus on smarmy prefixes and affixes. All you need is a (huger than you can ever handle) list of words/definitions and something to cover up the latter. And just start over whenever you mess up. </p>
<p>I’m not sure if it helps. On the PSAT reading I got a 760. On both of my SAT attempts after vocab meming, I got a 800 twice on the reading section and even took a nap. >.€</p>
<p>Roots and Prefixes most certainly work but you have to know HOW to form the connection from raw meaning to accepted meaning:</p>
<p>Example: extemporaneous (ex = out, temp = time ; extemp = “offbeat”. Now you need to “walk” the meaning over to its resting place, to “improvised”. Form this connection (If i play drums and i am supposed to follow a certain beat but decide to go “offbeat” for a while, then I am making that part up or “improvising”.)</p>
<p>This takes work. Memorizing synonyms is a waste of time you could be spending really learning words the way i just described. </p>
<p>Good luck,</p>
<p>JBL</p>