<p>Is the best way to learn vocabulary by reading? I'm trying to read more right now and I'm looking up many words (about 10-15 per page) on a book called Catch 22. Is this a good way to learn vocabulary? I tend to forget these words a while later so I'm not sure if my method is correct. However, there are a lot of words that I have learned from this year and it always feels good when I come across one of them. </p>
<p>Please help me with this skill: Know when to look up a word in the dictionary, when to guess the meaning and when to ignore it.</p>
<p>When should you ignore a word that you don't know and when should you look it up?? Thanks.</p>
<p>Also, does anyone like knowing the ** exact** meaning of words and not just a vauge definition? I always like to memorize the EXACT definition and try to extract the exact definition later on when I come across a word. If I don't remember the exact definition I look the word up again. I don't know why, but I just like know the whole dictionary defintion. Is this bad or good? How do you guys memorize vocabulary and actually use it chronically?</p>
<p>i started focusing on improving my vocabulary about a year ago and my motivation was to do it for the SATs but it ended up helping me in my reading and many other areas as well. I have improved SO much and let me just tell you one thing- it wasn't by "memorizing" words.</p>
<p>What you're doing is a great start. Look up every word you don't understand! But don't worry about the exact definition because you're bound to forget that, rather, you should focus on the "gist" of the word and the context in which it is used. Also, its important to read from a variety of sources, not only books but periodicals or online articles from magazines liek The Economist. A tip for looking up words from a book- you may want to highlight the words so that later on you can go back and try to remember what the word means. </p>
<p>The more times you read a word, or use a word, the more likely you are to remember it. When you read a word or a hear a word you don't know...look it up! Learning words takes time, but if you constantly look up words you won't need to know the exact definition because you will have gained the much more useful ability to utilize that word in the proper context. Good luck!</p>
<p>Wow thanks starburst. I agree with you and I don't simply want to memorize vocabulary for the SAT. Someday I would love to know the majority of words on the newspaper, on the TV news, etc. I want to be able to understand what they are saying. I will keep your strategies in mind. Thanks again.</p>
<p>read new york times articles 1) their passages are similar to the passages in sat reading section 2) ny times writers use a lot of good sat vocab words in their articles for some reason.</p>
<p>Most of the questions on the CR can, in my experience, be answered by knowing a vague definition. There may be a couple ones that cannot on each test, but most questions are pretty easy to figure out if one knows the basic meaning of each word choice.</p>
<p>Almost everyone says to learn vocab by reading, so I won't pretend to know more than all of them and say it doesn't work. It does, however, depend on the books one reads. IMO, the reason people recommend reading is because it allows one to learn the word in context. If I am reading and I don't understand a word and can figure out the context, I tend to move on and not learn the defintion of the word, nor do I always remember 'learning' the word. When I use flash cards, I learn the definition and remember that I learned it. I think that the books most people tend to read will not have an abudance of SAT words floating around them, so I prefer to learn by other methods. </p>
<p>One of the major SAT companies (I don't remember if it's Barrons, Princeton, Kaplan, etc.) puts out regular classic novels that have SAT words marked and defined when they come up. I have seen these novels in the test prep section of regular book stores.</p>
<p>NYT is definitely a relevant source, i've seen sparknotes novels which do a decent job as well. if you want a direct vocab list (30 pages from my own studying) just PM and i'll try to email that to you</p>
<p>i mean for the SAT vocab flash cards will definitely work, i do not deny that. but if you want to improve your writing, your general speaking ability, and again, your reading comprehension, its gonna take time. i mean, im sitting here with a bunch of flash cards as i preach to you, so lets be realistic. SAT words can be learned through flash cards but if you learn words through reading, you'll find that when you look at the list of SAT words you will be familiar with many of them. all i know is, SATs or not, mastering vocab takes time.</p>