<p>What would you do to prepare for a college entrance test? Memorize word lists from a dictionary or cram book, or read a lot of books and magazines that you find personally interesting?</p>
<p>Personally, I just memorize. Hey, I can do it, because I find it at least vaguely interesting. A nice compromise is to go to the SAT section of one's local bookstore and get one of the classics that has SAT notes added: a company (Barrons?) puts out regular versions of the classics but a certain number in each (written on the cover) are marked out as SAT words and defined.</p>
<p>depends on how much time you got. i would prefer reading cuz then the stuff you learn stay with you a little longer. if you don't have much time to prepare, then memorize.</p>
<p>BEST WAY to prepare for the SAT is reading good british lit for comprehension. I didn't spend any time memorizing, but got every reading comp question correct. The 4 vocab questions I got wrong only docked me 30 points, to a 770. Bronte is your friend.</p>
<p>omg! read the books! there is so much reading/writing on the SAT/PSAT, not to mention life in general! Plus, they're very tricky on the SAT with the vocabulary, so it's not easy to do well without knowing the niche meanings (which you'd probably need a teacher to tell you/book in context)</p>
<p>For example, Guise...a standard vocabulary books says "semblence, show"
You memorize the first two definitions, if you're very thorough. You probably don't know what semblence means, but whatever.</p>
<p>Then you see the question:
Under the ____ of being a policeman, the criminal was allowed into the victim's house.
a. guise
b. pretention
c. ----
d. ---
So, you sort of remember hearing "Under the pretext" or something, so b looks like an option, and a is a show, like a concert or a musical, right? So you get the wrong answer. They expect the students to study about a 100 words, or "sort of" know what a lot of words mean, and "sort of" know whether a word first or not on "sounding good".</p>
<p>I think the SAT test writers have been very good at finding genuine published passages that use words in ways the skilled authors use them, and the constructing questions so that students who memorize word lists get tripped up. The question might be, "IN THIS PASSAGE, the word [strange word] means ____." In many cases, a test-taker who reads a lot can figure out from context what the word must mean, among the answer choices, but a test-taker who memorizes the dictionary will chose some mistaken answer that doesn't fit the context. </p>
<p>I grew up in the era when almost no one prepped for the SAT I (except by taking the PSAT the year before), and no one in my part of the country had even heard of any commercial test-prep course. But we did fine on the SAT just by reading a lot, whatever we felt like reading in our free time.</p>
<p>I hate to say this, because it makes me sound so sanctimonious, but reading about students memorizing lists of vocabulary words to prepare for the SAT always leaves me feeling sad and unsettled. Whatever happened to studying language for its own sake? I keep hearing students refer to relatively common words as "SAT words" as if the College Board had made them up to spite us. Maybe it's because I'm not a native speaker and the incredible variety and nuance of English vocabulary has always fascinated me, or maybe it's just that I'm hopelessly sentimental about these things, but I feel as if many of these students are missing the point.</p>
<p>I've always read whatever I felt like reading, with no particular emphasis on the classics (but without avoiding them either), and the vast majority of the words on the vocabulary lists were already familiar to me. Better yet, I know how to use them in everyday discourse without yelling "ohmygod, SAT word!" as if they weren't, you know, part of the English language. </p>
<p>Oh, and I scored 800 on Critical Reading, which was nice and all, but that was never my motivation. (See, I told you I'd come off as condescending.)</p>
<p>I agree completely with cameliasinensis (whose name is a like a tongue twister for the keyboard). Whenever I see someone memorizing a list of vocabulary words instead of reading, I die a little bit inside. </p>
<p>As far as the SAT goes, memorizing vocab lists might be effective, but I doubt that it really helps with much else. I've seen "SAT words" misused more times than I can count by my friends who memorize lists and virtually never by my friends who consistently read books.</p>
<p>cameliasinensis, might I worship you for a bit? :D Where I live, English isn't respected and liked as a language (in general); it's tolerated as a handy tool. Which is sad, because there's quite a lot more to it than that -- reading for its own sake, or loving a language for its own sake, seems to be a bit outmoded now, and I rather hate that. </p>
<p>As far as the SAT's concerned, Critical Reading's the one section I managed an 800 on sans preparation, so my advice will be somewhat skewed; still, if one has the time, reading for pleasure's a lot more effective than memorising vocabulary lists. For various reasons.</p>
<p>Just read books. I never had to study for the rc/writing section just because reading over time develops a much stronger vocabulary (that you can actually USE) than simply memorizing a grocery list of words.</p>
<p>I don't know how I developed my vocabulary -- I don't look up words after reading them, I don't consciously think about the meaning of words, and I don't integrate an abnormally large vocabulary into everyday life. it's just that after reading many books by great authors, one develops a sense in words and what fits into the blank. I took the test on "what sounded roughly right," sheer logic, and some elimination.</p>
<p>Taggart, I know exactly what you mean. It's a development of ear, learning to fit words in that make everything go smoothly, and as long as you pay a little attention to minutiae you have an 800 without effort. (Of course, it's not something you can just start at the beginning of high school and get yourself an 800, although that would certainly improve your score; it means that you were an active reader in elementary school, and read things because you enjoyed it.)</p>
<p>Hey, I can bring at least a little research to bear on this. . . </p>
<p>I'm an SAT tutor, and I've been obsessing about this question. Here's the deal. According to the most up-to-date linguistic research, the typical college-bound high school senior has a vocabulary of about 41,000 words. But the "hardest words" on the SAT CR sections are not within the 41,000 most common words in English. In fact, the SAT CR frequently includes words that are way infrequent. . . not even within the first 86,000 most common words in English.</p>
<p>These statistics suggest that it's almost impossible to cover enough ground to know all the words on all of the SAT sections through memorization alone. Even if you assume that you have an SAT list that matches the basic type of vocabulary included on the SAT very closely, it's still unlikely that you'll be able to cover all of the possible SAT-level vocabulary.</p>
<p>I did a little bit more research to back this up. The Barrons 3500 word list is generally considered the most comprehensive SAT prep list on the market, so I compared it to all the words from the College Board blue book. I found that
about half of the words in the blue book are not represented in the Barrons list. Many of the words that were missing from the Blue Book were relatively easy, so a lot of students would know them already; still, it was clear that even memorizing 3500 words would not give a student a perfect score--not even on the Sentence Completion section, which is supposed to be a vocabulary test! The reading passages are even worse. All the vocabulary in the world won't help you on those passages if you are a weak reader.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I got an 800 on the CR section about ten years ago, and I distinctly remember not knowing every word on the test. And I can say that most people who get perfect scores don't know every word on the exam. They <em>do</em> have killer word-in-context skills, and they are highly skilled readers. They are usually (although not always--about 92% of the time, according to one source, 7 Keys to a Perfect SAT Score or something like that) very <em>fast</em> readers. Students who "memorize the dictionary," as you say, tend to top out in the high 600s--sometimes the low 700s, if they're quite bright--regardless of how many words they learn. I've seen a large number of kids show up in my classroom having hit a plateau because they're trying to prepare for the CR section exclusively through memorizing vocabulary. Does not work. But college admissions counselors usually agree that perfect 800s are the result of a lifetime of reading (cf. Michele Hernandez). </p>
<p>I wish I could cite all these facts. I really am sure about them. Sadly, I left my books at work and I'm sure you don't want a compiled bibliography anyway. Sorry if this is more information than you needed.</p>
<p>Great, informative post. I'm glad that I haven't been wrong when I've been telling people to just read books or periodicals instead of memorizing vocabulary.</p>
<p>I agree with most of the above posts. Memorizing vocabulary isnt altogether necessary. Most good readers can know approximately what a word means just by reading it over and over in books. Also, knowing vocabulary serves a greater purpose. It's not just 'yeah, I learned a 1000 SAT words that I'm definitely going to forget 30 seconds after the exam.' When you get to college, you will obviously need at least a mildly broad vocabulary, and many people fail to realize this.</p>
<p>And also, I regularly do the SAT question of the day, and I find that the vocab questions are pretty useful. They explain the correct word, and sometimes words that are completely off, so you start to learn words gradually.</p>
<p>Also, your (lotf629) post was very useful. Thanks for taking the time to type it all up!!</p>
<p>Thanks for letting me know it helped you out. I'm really glad it was useful!</p>
<p>Would you rather look at a pile of rocks or rocks constructed into a magnificent building?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Would you rather look at a pile of rocks or rocks constructed into a magnificent building?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's a good way to put it.</p>
<p>But it's a false dichotomy. Perusing reference works is a leisure activity for many people, including children too young to have heard of the SAT. Games can be played in this way, as well.</p>
<p>None .</p>