<p>Which of the SAT book's is the best one to use to enrich one's vocabulary? Two choices to choose from since I don't own a Barron's book: A) RocketReview's 323 words that are most often shown on the SAT (which I've already made 323 flashcards for) or B) Cracking the SAT 2008 -- study by just reading it right from the book? Please help me decide which one to choose as I have to study as many vocabulary words possible before January 26th. Last time I'll be taking the SAT, and I need to do very well on the CR section.</p>
<p>Since you've already made flash cards out of the RR list, then I would use the PR one, unless they overlap a lot (I have no idea about that). I have a book called Word Smart that is awesome for vocab.</p>
<p>Okay, I am trying to cram as many vocabulary words as I can before January 26th. My first goal is to memorize 323 words from RR, and then memorize the list from PR. From time to time, some of the words overlap, but not drastically.</p>
<p>I feel for you, I was in the same situation. I honestly don't think studying 323 words will help because there are just so many possible words that will pop up. I memorized thousands of words before I was consistently scoring perfect vocab sections. If you are having trouble with passages, work on those and then vocab. Passage questions are predictable, vocab never is.</p>
<p>After I reviewed the 3,500 Barron's list, I could consistently get all the sentence completion questions correct. There's a shorter list (~2,700 words) posted on CC which claims to be more efficient than the 3,500 Barron's.</p>
<p>I really doubt memorizing vocab is going to help. If anything I would try focusing on root words since you can recognize many different words just from recognizing a root. Unfortunately I didn't study off a list from those kind of books. It was more of a perk from my Latin classes. I'm sure if you find a root list, you'll find better success.</p>
<p>make intelligent guesses. </p>
<p>and luck, luck- you need luck.</p>
<p>amb3r - not sure if you were thinking of lotf's Sesame Words list, but she found that the 1900 word list covered something like 80% of CR words. Anyway its free: Sesame</a> Words: Academic and SAT Vocabulary
and it was a method I found to be helpful (too lazy to go out and find the Barron's one :P, but no regrets)</p>
<p>I personally hate memorizing roots. I picked up more of these roots from looking over lists instead, but roots might help you.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that studying vocab gives diminishing returns. Just study up until you can score where you want to. Don't try to preempt SAT words by memorizing the dictionary :/</p>
<p>Yeah, that is the one I'm thinking of. Sorry, I got the length of it totally off - 1900 not 2700 words, and that's pretty impressive for covering 80% of CR words. And lotf is a real SAT teacher, so I would trust that list. Had I found out about it, I'd probably have used it instead of Barron's 3500. It seems to be really good.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies everyone! I find that website very useful; thank you!</p>