<p>My friend who attends MIT literally knows the definition of every single word in the dictionary. Crazy guy.</p>
<p>Does this mean that when I'm studying for the SAT I should only read books??</p>
<p>I'm the same as Taggart. I've been an avid reader since I was a small child, and I never look up words. I just know them. I've often found that I use words I don't know the dictionary definition of in everday speech. I use them correctly, and I could give you a sentence with the word correctly used, but if I'm asked the definition, it takes me a while to come up with one. I haven't taken the SAT yet, but I got a perfect on the CR sections of the PSAT two years in a row, so I'm not expecting trouble. </p>
<p>lotf629: I can anecdotally confirm some of the ideas you posted. I'm an extremely quick reader, and like I mentioned, I score high on CR sections. Lifetime readers see "SAT words" in books many times before they see them on the SAT. I think that's a factor in the reason they do better than other students: they've seen the word in many contexts and know how it's used. It probably makes seeing the nuance between a workable answer and the "best" answer easier. </p>
<p>One thing that may help your students: Whenever one of my better English teachers taught a vocabulary word, she didn't give the definition. We got the word, the part of speech, and a sentence. We were supposed to define the word from context, and then write a sentence that someone else could use to define the word. Only after all that were we given the definition. Teaching that way is slow, but it makes sure that the students are learning, not just memorizing.</p>
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Perusing reference works is a leisure activity for many people, including children too young to have heard of the SAT.
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<p>Yes, "reading a good book" can include reading a dictionary for fun. That is one of my childhood pleasures I have continued into adult life. And, indeed, it can help develop a sensitivity to words to look carefully at how dictionary entries are constructed. And, yes, there are fun games like "blarney" (this may have other names in other parts of the country) that are played with dictionaries, which I have enjoyed at various ages. </p>
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Does this mean that when I'm studying for the SAT I should only read books?
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<p>What it means is that you should read avidly and widely. Yeah, sure, you'll look up words in dictionaries from time to time, after discovering those words in your personal reading. And there may be words here and there whose definitions (as reported in some trustworthy dictionary) you decide to memorize, because you like the words so well or because they puzzled you the first time you saw them. I opened this thread because I see many threads here on CC in which young people ask about which word list to memorize to get a higher score on a standardized test. My answer to that, in test-taker's language, would be "none of the above." Rather than taking a word list, and memorizing it, I would recommend spending the same amount of time reading a variety of reading material--which could include a list of "SAT words" or a dictionary--and enjoying that and thinking about it. That should help boost SAT scores quite well--I know of some local examples, from two generations of test-takers. Other replies in the thread have pointed out the advantages of having lots of reading experience in various contexts.</p>
<p>I'm a little conflicted. I got an 800 on the SAT before recentering (when a 600 was 97th percentile, and an 800 was like 99.99999999999th percentile). But I didn't learn lots of vocab. And I confess to having read a lot growing up. There were definitely a couple words I didn't know, but I kind of subconsciously picked up on the roots and am a very good guesser.
Yet, I do force-feed my tutoring students several very specific lists of vocab, and it works. One went from a 45 on her sophomore PSAT to a 730 on junior SAT on CR. These students recognize virtually all of the words. Of course, I have them learn roots and do a bunch of other stuff besides pure memorization.
So, I'd say you should continue to read lots of different types of stuff for both passage comprehension, figuring out weird words in context, and pure vocabulary (which is what some Sentence Completions test), and if you don't read much, start now.
But you should definitely learn vocab that has shown up with high frequency (or ever) on the SAT. You can also tell whether a word would be on the SAT, given a bit of experience with the test.
Think about it....every time you can eliminate a word, that's a quarter of a point. Every time you recognize the right answer, that's a point. 6 questions on passages are testing exactly the same skill, but perhaps in a context covering a couple sentences. Suppose there are 8 words on the SAT that you didn't know before you studied vocabulary, that are the right answer. Converting minus .25 to +1 8 times is an increase of 10 raw score points, which is worth 130 points in some areas of the curve. And every word that you can eliminate because you at least have a vague sense that it doesn't fit the context increases your raw score by .25.
If this test were anything besides a goofy vocab quiz, this wouldn't work, of course.
I'm always appalled when the test writers completely misuse words, or use words in a completely wrong context. Does the SAT count as "prose"?</p>
<p>I would just recommend reading. I did no vocab study, but I read for at least 4 hours a day (reading is a major passion and significantly decreases my amount of sleep). With that, I managed to pull an 800 on the CR SAT. Also - the curve is petty generous, unlike math where one problem docks you 30 points...</p>
<p>don't memorize the dictionary. Instead, grab the PR high frequency list, or better yet, the Barron's 3500 word list if you really hate yourself. Aside from that, read a classical novel.</p>