<p>To study for the SAT Critical Reading section, is it more useful to memorize massive amounts (thousands) of vocabulary, or to learn a lot about etymology and Latin/Greek roots?</p>
<p>I only used my Latin knowledge to help me with 3 or 4 words I didn't already know. Personally, I think neither method works all that well. The best way to learn vocabulary is reading.</p>
<p>Memorize. Some Latin/Greek roots + prefixes could have different meanings than what they suggest.</p>
<p>memorize vocab. Sometimes, it is difficult to extract which root a word contains. for example : the root of audacious is audax, not aud. audacious has nothing to do with sound (definiton of aud). However, I would still know your basic roots, like anti - (opposite)</p>
<p>Definitely memorize. But memorizing thousands of words is probably overkill (and easier said than done).</p>
<p>Also make sure that what you're memorizing is actually something which you can use. The Barron's 3500 word list has some recycled GRE words from what I've heard, but they have 300 or so high frequency words that are good to know. I think that the Sparknotes list is also quite useful. Roots are good, but don't memorize just roots. Something like neo=new could help you on something like neophyte(a novice or someone new to something), but memorizing words might be better in the long run.</p>
<p>How much do I need to memorize?</p>
<p>I have this novel called "Test of Time" that's written with common SAT words in mind, and they are boldfaced throughout the book. If you don't know the meaning of a word, you can look it up in the back of the novel.</p>
<p>Is this any use?</p>
<p>Well there are a lot of SAT books out there. Princeton, Grubers, Rocket Review, Kaplan, Barron's, and the list goes on and on. I definitely think that you should avoid memorizing 3400 words because there are only 21 sentence completions out of 67 CR questions, you need to focus more on passages. I recommend the Sparknotes 1000 and look over the Barron's 300 high frequency words(marked with a circle out of the 3500 words). </p>
<p>Have you heard of Kaplan's literature SAT books? They take classics like Frakenstein and say that books like these are full of SAT words. They highlight the words and have definitions on the other page. Still, memorizing words is a great strategy, but another good one is to just look up a word whenever you don't know what it is. You want to know what words like ambiguous, indolent, abdicate, etc mean because not even roots can help you entirely.</p>
<p>Use new words in conversations. For example, I was reading the New York Times last week and they had the word "fusillade" ("But he finds himself at the center of a fusillade of criticism from his rivals.") I'm going to forget this if I don't use it in conversation. Reading the New York Times is good for vocabulary, reading comprehension, and for learning more about the world.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. Do you guys means this list of 333 words?</p>
<p>The</a> Free & Smart Way to Learn SAT Test Vocabulary Words » Barron High-Frequency GRE</p>
<p>That's for the GRE, not the SAT. My list is slightly different I think. You don't NEED the Barron's list, and you don't need to spend $20 on the Barron's book just for that list.</p>
<p>In what book is the list of 300 words?</p>
<p>Barron's How to Prepare for the SAT 2007-2008. There are 3500 words that have 300 high frequency words that have appeared 8-40 times over the past 20 years on the SAT. But it's really not worth spending $20 just for those high frequency words.</p>
<p>I think I might borrow it from a library. Thanks!</p>