March Vocabulary Comparison

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

<p>Words: acute, ambivalent, analogy, anomalous, beguiled, cavalier, confluence, culled, derisive, disdain, dispel, enmity, evenhanded, faction, finite, impede, implacable, insidious, jaded, jovial, maladroit, mimicry, neophyte, paradox, penchant, peremptory, polemical, precipitate, regal, skeptical, substantiate, superlative, truncated, underscore (34 words)</p>

<p>DIRECT HITS (Vol 1 & 2) had 12 hits: ambivalent, analogy, anomalous, cavalier, dispel, implacable, jovial, neophyte, paradox, penchant, precipitate, skeptical</p>

<p>SPARKNOTES (Free Top 250 and 250 Most Difficult) had 15 hits: acute, ambivalent, analogy, anomalous, beguiled, confluence, disdain, dispel, enmity, implacable, insidious, neophyte, paradox, penchant, polemical</p>

<p>POWERSCORE (Free 7 decks of words/700 words) had 17 hits: acute, ambivalent, analogy, cavalier, derisive, disdain, dispel, insidious, jaded, neophyte, paradox, penchant, precipitate, skeptical, substantiate, truncated, underscore</p>

<p>BARRON'S (3500 words) had 31 hits. They had all but derisive, finite, and superlative.</p>

2

<p>You are right about DH. Definitely another poor performance. However, your list includes several words that were either wrong answers or appeared on experimental sections. For example, cavalier, jaded, polemical and regal were definitely wrong answers. Also, I believe that ambivalent and neophyte were experimental. I put skeptical but it is a disputed answer. Not sure about paradox. I don’t recall it as an answer.</p>

3

<p>I think its a huge mistake not to study wrong answers. If you can eliminate an answer choice because you know its definition, your odds improve for selecting the right answer. The wrong answer words were included on purpose because they are still SAT vocabulary words.</p>

4

<p>How many words are in DH1 &2? 100 words?</p>

5

<p>DH V1 = 287
DH V2 = 252
Total = 539</p>

6

<p>ok, guys, I have nenver posted on CC before-just took SAt for first time. But I have read it a ton. There is no sense comparing how good these vocab lists are. At any rate, i took this test and you left out some of the correct answer choices like fortuitous, havoc, polar and scavengers. ( llook at the compiled list on the CR thread)</p>

<p>ALso, followtheby is right…your list of words is so random. There are many words on there that were wrong answer choices. If you are going to make a correct list, then you should include ALL correct answers and compare the lists. Or compare ALL the words on the test- not just random ones to make your list look like it is better than it really is. </p>

<p>AND as XIGGI keeps saying, words like analogy and ambivalent are on every single test prep list that i have seen. </p>

<p>these comparisons are biased and need to stop.</p>

7

<p>400 words total 200 in each</p>

8

<p>Agree with Xan1959 - the above list is biased. It does not contain a full list of the correct answers. For example, fortuitous, acute, reiterate, and champion were all answers. The list of wrong answers is incomplete and therefore biased. For example, I took the test and remember axiomatic as a wrong answer. It would never be possible to make a full list of all the wrong answers.
Still, some lists/books really are better than others.
DH has over 500 words in its index. Counting them is a pain.</p>

9

<p>Who has time to go through 3500 from Barrons? I know I was counting on my daughter to learn some of these words from her English classes.</p>

10

<p>I took the words from the March CR thread. ‘Acute’ is listed above. I didn’t think ‘reiterate’ and ‘champion’ were vocabulary words, since they’re pretty common. And I must have missed ‘fortuitous’ and ‘axiom’ in the CR thread. For what it’s worth, DH and Barron’s have both of those, and Sparknotes has ‘fortuitous.’</p>

<p>And I only posted my findings. I didn’t include any opinion about which list is best. I don’t understand why so many people get defensive anytime DH might be questioned (which it wasn’t). I personally bought the DH and Barron’s book and I use the free words lists on Sparknotes and Powerscore. Someone with other lists is free to add to this thread. </p>

<p>And why are the correct answers the only ones we should be studying? Many of these wrong answers are right answers on other tests.</p>

11

<p>what about the essential 300 words ? how well did it perform ?</p>

12

<p>I think what people are trying to say is that these lists are very biased and probably started by the people who write the books or work for the companies. I don’t think it has anything to do with DH, al least that is not how I read this. </p>

<p>I agree with several of the other posters on here that these “comparsions” are very biased and do not accurately present the information. I would advise everyone to take these lists with a grain of salt.</p>