SAT Vocabulary Tips

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

Hello everyone. I am an international student taking the January SAT in 10 days. I am quite used to the Maths and Writing Sections. But it’s the Reading section that bogs me down. I am starting to increase my accuracy in the reading passages as well (get ~2-3 wrong on every section) and I hope to score in the 700+ range this Jan.

I have DH1 and DH2 nearly covered but I keep on missing 4-5 sentence completion questions. This is taking away valuable points from me. I really want to ace the Sentence Completion questions in order to secure a raw score > 60 on the test.

I have a Sparknotes 1000 word list. Should I start prepping from it? Please suggest me some additional vocabulary preparation tips. I am ready to devote every single day until test day for an 18 or 19 on the sentence completion questions.

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One thing I would say before you learn 1000 more words is, do you know why you are getting the SC’s wrong? Is it because you don’t know the words or do you find that even when you do pretty much know the words that you are still getting questions wrong? If it is the former then obviously you should study more words (or study them more effectively), but if it is the latter then it may be the way you are reading the sentences and understanding the clues (which should point unambiguously to a single meaning, assuming you understand all of the words in the sentence). So just consider that before spending tons of time learning loads of additional words.

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Are you really? If you are, this is what you do:

  1. Forget about reading asinine lists of words. Even if it might help a bit, it will be a colossal waste of your time.
  2. Go back to your stack of official tests. Do not use any of the wannabe tests.
  3. Get all the SC sections and start READING every one of them (not taking the test to "check" what you know. Read every question WITH the answer in front of you. Look up any word you do not know but most importantly NOTE THE PATTERNS and identify WHY 4 answers are wrong. At least two should be dead giveaways. Make sure you KNOW why they are wrong.
  4. Understand that the SC is mostly a matter a proper technique and that you do NOT need to know every word that will appear as most of them are NOT relevant to finding the correct answer.
  5. When you finish your stack, do it again!

If you are not improving, look for one great guide on this issue. Buy the Black Book by Mike Barrett or google search the ubiquitous Grammatix older version.

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@reasonsat‌ Thanks for the tips. :smile: I have to say it’s only occasionally that I have problem understanding the clues. Most of the time, the words are the villains that get the better of me.

@xiggi‌ - Thank you so much for replying. I’ll try to incorporate this strategy for the remaining days. Also, could you suggest me on approaching the reading passages as I head into my final week? I always tend to miss the Hard Level questions on every passage. It’s as if I have to develop a whole new mindset when it comes to Hard Level Questions! (I manage to ace passages having easy and medium level questions, but seeing the answers to the hard questions make me go like - what? how?) Sometimes, I take more time to process what the passage is trying to say, and I just get confused to pick a correct answer. But I have started to grasp the patterns as I am consistently scoring in the 650s. Thanks a lot! :smile:

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@xiggi‌ @dialga2014‌
Although you’re a bit late for memorizing words, which is, as xiggi put it, an asinine thing to do in the first place, it can be helpful for international students early on. With just several days left, you’ll need to focus on xiggi’s advice.

However, if you do decide to take the test again, (and assuming English is your second language) make sure you do study some vocabulary early on because you do need to know a degree of vocab, but you do not need to know everything.

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Ahh the CR part of the SAT is tough, because whereas math and writing you can easily learn, I feel like you have to be a native speaker in order to do well. Though English wasn’t my first language, I did read a lot as a child, and compared to my friends who didn;t, I did significantly better. I don’t think that you’ll gain much from jamming in Vocab words but what I did is bought the SAT blue book and took CR tests everyday before the test. Every word that I did not know I then circled and found the definition. When I took the test last March, about five of the words from the blue book popped up on the test and three happened to be the actual correct answers (cursory, sycophant, jingoism)!

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@woandering and @couplemoreweeks‌ thanks for your comments. I’ll try these tips and see how the test goes.

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For the record, there seems to be a continuing misunderstanding of what learning “vocab” means. Some have taken my advice literally and believe that I discount the value of having a good command of English. That is not the case. The part I do reject is that someone --anyone-- is able to concoct THE list of words that has a good chance to help you. Learning words should be done in the context of reading. Attempts such as Larry Krieger have been a step in the right direction but although based on the same principle of culling words from past tests, it suffers from the same problem: choosing a few hundred words among many.

My suggestion which involves READING CRITICALLY as many older tests as you can happens to “hit” an even larger number of words with the bonus of learning the patterns of the SAT. And those patterns represent 90 percent of the difficulty or the … ease to solve the SC questions.

Please understand there is no magic list of words. All the time you spend on practicing (or reading) older SAT tests will pay off as your mind becomes more attuned to the format of the test.

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Yeah and let me also be clear that I am not a believer in studying reams of words. I think studying vocab no matter how you do it has limited benefit. That said, I would disagree that it needs to be started many months in advance of the test. That would help, and its especially important if you want to actually learn the words and be able to use them for the rest of your life. But you can definitely cram words as you get close to your test date…the thing is that you are unlikely to remember those words once the SAT is over, so you are not really “learning” the words in the way that you probably should. Its also not necessarily the best use of your time. It really depends on what is needed. But I have had students who have sort of hit a ceiling with RC and realistically are not likely to get any more points there and have as there only major lingering issue a really poor vocabulary that is leading to far more wrong answers on the SC than they should have (for example a breakdown of 3RC wrong and 5SC wrong). In that case, assuming there weren’t other things that they should be doing on the other sections that would be more valuable, I would say that cramming some words in the last couple of weeks may help bring the CR score up a bit.

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Thanks @xiggi‌ and @reasonsat‌ for you thoughts and suggestions. Will let you know how I fare in the test.

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Just for a quick update, I didn’t do quite good in the CR section. I got a 570 but did get 16 Sentence Completion questions correct. This thread did help me out. Thanks!

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Ok well 16 out of 19 is very good, especially given that your score was 570, so whatever you did with vocab obviously worked pretty well. Normally at that score I would expect more like 5 or 6 wrong on SC. So I think you are fine on vocab and probably need to work on RC more.

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@reasonsat‌ Thanks for the comment.

To be honest, I am done with the SAT. I have already applied to all probable schools and my application process is more or less already over. I got 790s on the Maths and Writing portions. But the sad thing is, no matter how hard I tried, my reading score never reached a constant high range. In the practice tests, I scored a 700 once, 650s a couple of times, and mostly low 600s. I exhausted up the whole Blue Book, understanding and analyzing every single question and answer. I went over Xiggi’s SAT prep advice, and even the black book prep advice, practiced with over 20 official tests. But no, I couldn’t even manage a silly 600. :frowning: And I agree that the CR score might cost me dearly in an otherwise competitive application that I believe I have.)

I am an international applicant, and sometimes I think that one needs to have a strong background to score well on the CR section. And I always believed I was good at English. (still do) I even won a couple of national essay and poetry contests, but then CR stomped over me badly. I seemed to have mastered the section at times. But there was always that another passage that popped up and slapped me right in the face.

I might not take the SAT ever again, but sure would love to get a good reading score. So, for the time being, any other comments/suggestions to improve my reading comprehension will be heartily appreciated. :smile:

However, I don’t think the CR section justifies my abilities. :wink: (which might change if I do get a good score someday)

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Based on the writing sample above, I do not think you will have problems at a US college. The SAT Verbal is just part of the puzzle, and I think your applications will be well received.

You worked hard at improving your scores, and along the way, you also learned a few things that will help you in the future. The CR tested on the SAT was just not your thing. You have PLENTY of company there.

Best of luck to you!

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Yeah I was thinking the same thing as Xiggi when I was reading your post. I would not have guessed that you are an international applicant based on your writing!

Let me just throw 2 things out there, @dialga2014, one to maybe make you feel a bit better and the other to offer some suggestions on improving your RC ability.

I am a tutor and I have always scored a perfect score on the CR section when I have taken it as an adult, but I was very, very far from a perfect score when I was in HS. My verbal score was pretty mediocre actually. Looking back on it, I can identify 2 things. One, I really didn’t understand the nature of “Verbal” questions on standardized tests and in particular the fact that they are completely unambiguous, black-and-white, and that there is one definitely right answer and 4 definitely wrong answers (I actually posted about this on the forum very recently). But the other thing looking back is that I just didn’t have very good reading ability. And part of that was that I was never taught how to read critically and actively - this almost got me in deep trouble in college because I went to a very competitive school and I chose to study History of all things, and most of the other students did know how to read critically. So I struggled a little at first until I realized why and then once I learned to read in the way that I needed to things changed for me completely. When I took the GRE and the GMAT after college I expected that my Math scores would be much higher than my Verbal scores since that’s the way it was on the SAT, but I found that percentile-wise I was equal or better on the Verbal sections - this was an absolute shock to me!!! So this is all to say that it may be that you have not necessarily been taught how to read critically, especially with non-fiction writing (I have found that the overwhelming majority of students have not). But all is not lost because that is a skill that you can acquire and it may be that in the future you would be able to go back to the SAT and find that the RC feels much, much easier and that you would essentially dominate it because you have become such a better reader.

Secondly, I have to really applaud you for wanting to improve your reading ability given that you are done with the SAT. In my opinion being a strong reader is crucial for success in college and in life in general, so it is a very worthy goal. With that in mind, let me offer some suggestions. In terms of books that teach how to read critically, there may be better books outside of the SAT world that really teach this, but within the test prep space (and even including the GMAT, GRE, and ACT space) the one that best does it in my opinion is Erica Meltzer’s The Critical Reader. Maybe you have already used the book, but she does a very good job of explaining how to read for purpose, function, and attitude, a key skill in reading critically.

I also recently started a blog series on my website (I don’t think I can post a link, but you can probably find it by googling my username or you can just pm me offline) that is aimed at helping people learn how to read critically. The main goal is for the purposes of the SAT, but I also want to just help people become better readers and I especially want them to understand how reading critically is important for the reading that you will do in college and in the real world more generally. There is only one example up there now (I plan to add new posts as often as I can), but essentially I take an article or passage from the real world (an op-ed piece, an article from a scholarly publication, etc.) and then ask some questions about it and then in a follow-up post I offer some commentary on the piece and on the questions that I posed. Feel free to take a look.

In fact I considered posting about this on the forum, but I wasn’t sure if there would be interest in it. If people think that it would be helpful I could do it, but I don’t think I can post the same content since google will probably punish me for that! and I am also not sure if I am allowed to post the links to the articles in the forum (not sure what the rules are for that)? If some forum members think it would be helpful and if I am allowed to post links to the passages then maybe I could write some separate posts just for the forum so as not to duplicate content.

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OP, have you used Erica Meltzer’s The Critical Reader? I think its helpful for both the SAT CR and reading comprehension in general.

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Reasonsat, I really (I should repeat really) liked what you wrote about the evolution of a test taker. I am afraid that it is easy to forget how challenging the verbal SAT for a 16 or 17 years old student… but is becoming easier later in life. Of course, for many, this is a direct result of finally discovering the value of reading actively.

For the record, one of my best sources of improvement was none other than having “wasted” many hours immersed in Tolkien’s and Sony/Verant’s world of orcs and elves. My parents, however, might never agree that the “vocab” came from questing in arcane worlds! :slight_smile:

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Definitely. In HS I vividly remember thinking that RC on the SAT was just flat out unfair and that the questions were ambiguous and open to interpretation and just impossible to get right with any consistency. When I got to college and met people who had scored in the 700-800 range on the Verbal section I remember thinking that I honestly couldn’t even understand how they did it, lol!

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Thank you everyone for your warm responses. Hopefully, my reading skills will get better in the coming days!

As reasonsat said, I think my problem was not being able to read critically. Looking back, I feel that I invested more time in SAT books that went over the nature of 4 wrong answers, and the every-popular but ever-true rule of ONE CORRECT ANSWER. I knew what to look for, but I didn’t find the thing I was looking for consistently.

I wish I had used Erica Meltzer’s Critical Reader. As reasonsat and CHD mentioned, I guess it would have developed a solid foundation in me to analyze CR passages. I too haven’t played my part, as I seldom “waste” my time in novels as xiggi said :stuck_out_tongue: I should start doing that more often.

Again, thanks for the boosting comments!

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I have now decided to really develop a habit of reading books. Can you suggest some good ones to start with? I didn’t understand a thing in the first paragraph of Rudyard Kipling’s “With the Night Mail”, just so you know my current level of comprehension. I am thinking of starting with Don Quixote and perhaps also some Charles Dickens stuff.

Any good suggestions? Thanks :slight_smile: