<p>Arabrab (Barbara?), my son has grown up with Harry Potter and, as you probably know, each instatllment of the HP series has been sequentially directed toward an older age group. JK also uses some word-expanding vocabulary, especially in the later books. I had my son recently highlight the words he didn't know and then look them up. Like you, I was surprised at the gaps, especially for a 16-year old. As read the last book, I took special note of the vocabulary and was pleased to see that it's not written at a kid level.</p>
<p>Regular readers of the NYT or WSJ should have no difficulties with the vocabulary on the SAT. All the SAT words appear in those papers. Reading either paper is also excellent practice for the SAT reading passages because the difficulty level is about the same. Of course, there is the additional benefit of being well-informed about the news and various other things.</p>
<p>My favorite Beatrix Potter word is "soporific," although I don't recall in which tale it appeared.</p>
<p>EllenF - absolutely, in fact the CB uses the Christian Science Monitor, USNWR, Time, Newsweek, the New Republic, the Washington Post along with the NYT, as well as People magazine, Sports Illustrated and even the Ladies Home Journal (and other materials such as the U.S. Constitution, The Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers) to come up with their word lists. </p>
<p>On vocabulary acquisition - it is estimated that the average vocabularies of first graders is about 5,000 words, while that of college students hovers somewhere around 50,000. For most kids, about one-third of these words are acquired through reading - like arabrab, those who are voracious readers do get and retain vocabulary through sheer volume and repetition which adds to their personal treasury-storehouse. The more a student reads - from newspapers to "The Scarlet Letter" and "The Grapes of Wrath" and best-sellers like Harry Potter or "Life of Pi" - the better they can grapple not just with the words but with meaning in context and complex sentence structures. For a short-term, quick-fix, using the CB books and/or vocabulary workbooks like the Oxford-Sadler series as other have suggested will probably help give less avid readers a boost to improve their cultural literacy.</p>
<p>I agree with Alummom that reading the New Yorker is a great way to not only build a vocabulary but continue that journey of life long learning.</p>
<p>Just a great magazine!</p>
<p>EllenF,
"Soporific" was one of DS1's favorite words when he was young. Unfortunately, he used it all too often to describe his pre-K class, which did NOT amuse the teacher.</p>
<p>I'll add The Atlantic to the list of great publications for high schoolers to read.</p>
<p>
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My favorite Beatrix Potter word is "soporific," although I don't recall in which tale it appeared.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It's the first line in The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies: "It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is soporific." My favorite was The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse. :)</p>
<p>My favorite was The Tailor of Gloucester. "No more twist!" My kid's are named after Potter characters. Accidentally in the case of Mathson, deliberately for little brother.</p>
<p>Mathson would have been 10 or 11 when first book came out, right? How much age difference between S2 and S2?</p>
<p>Stil, its neat</p>
<p>bookworm, I think mathmom means Beatrix Potter, not Harry.</p>
<p>Oh my,
I feel quite foolish. I was mentally assigning Harry, Ron, etc. to Mathmom's children. In have not looked at my B Potter stuff for many years.</p>
<p>Ahhhhwww.
Is one of your sons named Tommy? Mine is! I cross-stitched the little poem about Tommy Tittlemouse and hung it in my little boy's nursery:</p>
<p>Little Tommy Tittlemouse
Lived in a little house
He caught fishes
In other mens ditches</p>
<p>And my son grew up to love fishing!</p>
<p>LOL. But my boys do love the animals they are named after. :)</p>
<p>Dang, now I gotta go back to Beatrix. I'm okay with Peter, but I'm guessing the other name isn't Flopsy. I'm getting mental pictures of the ducks, the geese, the cat- blanking on all the other names. I guess it could be MacGregor Mathson. Has a nice ring to it.</p>
<p>Benjamin Bunny! (not Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, or Nutkin, I hope!) :D</p>
<p>LOL. No not Flopsy!</p>
<p>For those that need or want a kick-start, there are a lot of fun on-line vocabulary resources - hangman games and flashcards are standard favorites. The SUPERVOCAB site is worth taking a look at. Features include Virtual Flash Cards [SAT] and a link to a 5,000 word list both of which are set up to give word usage examples with ample and varied sentence contexts all linked to Merriem-Webster online.</p>
<p><a href="http://romanization.org/satflash/flash.php%5B/url%5D">http://romanization.org/satflash/flash.php</a></p>
<p><a href="http://supervoca.net/example/sat.html%5B/url%5D">http://supervoca.net/example/sat.html</a></p>