<p>Which list, if studied alone, will give you the BIGGEST probability of knowing the words on the Jan. SAT.</p>
<p>Choices: Word Smart I + II
Barrons 3500 (!!)
Gruber 3400
Sparknotes 1000 Wordlist
Princeton Review Hit Parade</p>
<pre><code> any other freakin u know of.
</code></pre>
<p>Time's winding down and I'm sure no one is crazy enough to take on three-four wordlists. All you experienced Verbal Study People, which one is the BEST!</p>
<p>Seriously though, memorizing thousands of words for the SAT is rediculous; you don't need to know every word on the SAT, just the right ones. I knew maybe 75% of the words on my test and I did damn good.</p>
<p>encomium, i don't agree. memorizing words is helpful simply because of the amount of words being taken in. although you get the word in better context with reading, not many words are picked up through reading. also, reading can be misleading, because sometimes words in text are used out of their ideal meaning, overly metaphorical. sometimes one may get the wrong impression about what a word means in text. you really have to know the meaning of the word for the analogies. and none of the sentence completions really require an immense knowledge of how words should be used in context. you can kind of just figure it out.</p>
<p>memorizing words brought up my sentence completions to perfect nearly every time i took a practice test. </p>
<p>so i think not. </p>
<p>i would guess, trying to remember words from a book that you've looked up is very hard for most people b/c you only see the word once or twice. also, frequent interruption from reading to check up a word is annoying. </p>
<p>with memorizing, your sole aim is to commit the words to your memory with repitition. it works best</p>
<p>you're a senior member. i hope most of your posts aren't as haste is this.</p>
<p>Barrons 3500
EnconiumII - i definately agree with tigeruppercut. i also hope ur other posts arent ass haste as this one. and besides, who can read novels in the last month of a testing day? Memorizing will help a LOT MORE.</p>
<p>whatever...memorizing words isn't the worst thing in the world, it's just a big waste of time...on every SAT I took the words were pretty basic, and you didn't have to know the exact denotation rather the connotation, which you get by reading. and to say that you don't pick up a lot of words through reading is ridiculous. the only analogy i ever got wrong was on the october SAT, and the question had no difficult vocabulary in it at all. the most obscure word i ever saw on an SAT was "hidebound" and it was an incorrect answer choice. i suggest reading, a lot. the chances that your studies of vocabulary in one month or twenty days will be fruitful and you'll see a word on the test are slim. reading a lot will increase your speed and stamina and vocabulary, and it is also far more enjoyable and fulfulling. remember...40 out of 78 verbal questions are critical reading...and you pick up syntax and tone and meaning much quicker if you're a reader.</p>
<p>Studying preselected lists of words can be helpful, but in very limited occasions. For the overwhelming majority of students, lumbering through the list will provide a false sense of accomplishment and yield few positive results. </p>
<p>You would be much better off to read all the past SAT tests. You would be even better off by taking all the practice tests AND pay close attention to the style and tone of the test. </p>
<p>If you are set on spending the time working with lists and flashcards, you need to understand how the lists were compiled. Most of the lists started by compiling the words that appeared on past tests. The best lists are the ones that do NOT pretend to be more than a historical compilation. The worst lists are the ones that pretend to be better by adding a lot of seemingly difficult words that miss the SAT mark. The most abject offender is Barron's: by recycling their ineffective GRE list of words, the authors of the 3500 words have a played a silly joke -I could call it organized fraud- on a bunch of unsuspecting high school students. If you want a mathematical analysis of the number of Barron's words that appear on new tests, you can read a few of my old posts. Barron's can give you a good indication of what showed up in the past, but does a horrible job at predicting future occurences. The difference is important to know. </p>
<p>I'll leave you with a last tidbit of information. The SAT does not really test your vocabulary but you reasoning ability. The challenging questions are made difficult, not by testing arcane words, but by testing the secondary and tertiary meanings of EASY words. Examples of such meanings are "air" when used as a verb, "low" when representing a sound, and a slew of others.<br>
If you want to improve your verbal scores, spend most of your energy understanding the techniques to recognize the patterns of analogies, SC, and especially critical reading. If you truly have time to waste, spend it on the wordlists. </p>
<p>Studying any wordlist without the absolute mastery of the techniques is a recipe for disaster. Spend enough time analyzing the test, and you might start understanding that posters like Encomium are well-meaning when they come back on this forum to show the light at the end of the tunnel. </p>
<p>Unless you have an extremely limited vocabulary, I don't see how attempting to memorize thousands of words is going to help you much. Obviously the test-makers don't expect the test-taker to know every single word in the sentence-completion section. I would imagine that if you spent the same amount of time reading as you did trying to memorize myriads of SAT words, you'd be better off, because then when you take the test and see a familiar word you'll understand what context it's used in (just from the way it sounds) and can mark the answer which you feel is best.</p>
<p>anyways, memorizing wordlists WILL NOT WASTE YOUR TIME. memorize a shorter wordlist if you don't want something huge. ahhhhhhh screw this. i'll never be able to get back what i wrote. stupid internet.</p>