<p>"350 Hot Words for the SAT I" is useful if you do not want to memorize 1000+ words.</p>
<p>xiggi's back? (either that, or I just haven't seen him for a while)
Nice!</p>
<p>About the memorizing part, all of you saying your scores went up, they probably went up because of other factors too (as we learn in AP Stats, lurking variables: time & experience, perhaps) not just vocabulary you memorized.
Certainly it can't hurt, but i beleive it isn't wise nor time efficient to wholly memorize given lists.</p>
<p>oh guys...I didn't mean to be rude or anything, I just didn't want you getting your hopes up. There's nothing wrong with memorizing vocabulary in general, it can be kind of fun actually, so go ahead and do it if you want. (I like memorizing words from foreign languages)</p>
<p>who is Xiggi???</p>
<p>Xiggi:
hey, i dont believe you. i will prove u wronog. i am taking the barron's list of 3500 words. ok, its a little too much but did u see the grubbers (3400) and kaplan's(3000) wordlists? if u did, u will see that almost all of 3500 words from Barron's book is on the list of the kaplan's and grubbers. i have heared that u have posted up wordlists. how did u have your wordlist? from sources. Sources can never predict the future events. do u think that ur list will help me better on the Jan. test??! then u r wrong. ur list is a bigger joke. i am not criticizing ur list, but i am supporting the barron's list. Barron's have used a computer anylysis to get the most repidative words. ur list may have done the same. no list can predict the test. However, barron's list can win my support. WHY?? Because it is like a mini-collegiated dictionary. ETS tests the ability of the test-takers to use college words. and so, barron's list comes in handy. its short and reasonable. this is a big proof.
also, i have emailed many ppl who have used the barron's list. the have really aced the test. some of them also got a 1600 by using barron's collegiated words. if u knew all the words in that list, u can get a 1600 (if CR potion is one of ur expertise). but after using this list, my score has been drastically increasing and continuing to increase. I do not think that barron's list is a joke. what makes ur list better? (I am not makin fun, or criticizing u or ur list. but, however, i am supporting the barron's list). btw, have u used it? then how do u know it is a joke???</p>
<p>xiggi response?</p>
<p>Nitinrao, I hope for your own sake that you'll enjoy spending all that time on the Barron's list. I wish you'd spend some of your precious time and energy to check the archives of College Confidential. Do a simple search on wordlists and you'll find some of my old posts. I have little interest in debating my credibility on this issue. </p>
<p>Based on your recent posts on CC, I think that spending time reading the archives should be very beneficial to you. </p>
<p>To answer your question regarding the lists, I did spend time researching all commonly available lists and posted my findings on the old board. Since I recompiled the entire Barron's list in Excel to verify the degree of occurrence on recent tests, I think that I learned a bit about its effectiveness.</p>
<p>Let's talk in a few months - this should give you plenty of time to learn a few things about the SAT test.</p>
<p>Hi Xiggi glad to see you posting in this part of the forums again.
Hope college is going well.
Xiggi has been posting for a while, just in different parts such as the Parents Forum.</p>
<p>Anyways, in regards to wordlists, Xiggi doesn't oppose wordlists (Barron's, Oxford, whatever) as you will find in his old posts. But in preparation for the SAT, there are better ways that are less time consuming in order to increase your score.
If a student spent 70 hours memorizing vocab words versus a student that spent 50 hours reviewing 10 Reals in the right manner, the student reviewing the test would probably do better on the actual test. Why? Because most wordlists cannot predict what words will be used on future tests, but they look at words that were used before and put them on the wordlist.
Sometimes, the words do not have the correct definition either, since ETS likes to use 2nd or 3rd meanings.
Another reason that wordlists are a waste of time in preparation for the SAT can be that a person spends time memorizing hundreds-thousands of words, and on the test they may only see 3-5, maybe even up to 11 if they are lucky. But why spend time memorizing so many words to see only a few words on test day?
There are usually clues that can be used instead to get to the right answer.
Xiggi has done many compilations of different wordlists and compared them to actual tests (I think he has all of them up to whatever date he last tested, since he ordered them from ETS. I think they stopped the ordering service for past tests now though.) and has observed that many of the wordlists are terrible predictors of common words on the SAT. </p>
<p>I'm not opposed to wordlists either, but unless you are a person that has a super super low Verbal score (and very limited vocab.) or a person that is only a few points away from a perfect score and know the strategies like the back of your head, then it would be better to review 10 Reals versus memorizing vocab. </p>
<p>I myself am memorizing vocab this time for Jan. SAT because the above didn't work for me. (probably because I don't know how to review a test to find strategies, not my style) So I'm trying something different and hope it works.
Everyone does things differently, so do whatever fits you best. Xiggi is just giving his viewpoint on how to prep and wordlists isn't a way that he highly recommends. That's all.</p>
<p>I guess I'll see for myself if vocab lists actually help my score or not. </p>
<p>Thanks for posting Xiggi, hope you come back some more and share your knowledge.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I see where your goin with your strategy. I have one question for you,</p>
<p>How do u answer a super hard analogy in which you don't know either of the stem words? Its just a general question, nothing to do with wordlists or anything (but I'm memorizing the Barrons list (just the words i dont know))</p>
<p>hey i know... first eliminate any 2 answers with same relationship. for example, if 2 of the answer choices have similar realtions, eliminate them. then u should eliminate the ones which has no relation. then u get to 1 or 2 answers left. Thats how i do it. kapla's verbal wkb. shows that and practices with it. go to takesat.com for more practice. PM me if u need more help.</p>
<p>The SAT verbal section is a test of reasoning ability, as other in this thread have said. I totally agree that it is MUCH MORE efficient to study 10 Real SATs than memorize words. I have often encountered analogies where the two tested words are unknown to me. However, becuase I know the style with which the test makers write their questions I can eliminate many of the choices and usually end up with the right one.</p>
<p>However, i mainly started this thread because I want to attain (as others) a 750+ in the verbal section. I hope to do this through using an effective word list. Barron's is ridiculous and so are any other lists with 2000+ words. Word lists should help you remember the words, not present themselves as dictionaries.</p>
<p>Rephrasing my inital question: Which 1000 words or less vocabulary list is most effective in predicting SAT words?</p>
<p>Word Smart/Sparknotes</p>
<p>collegefreak87
WHAT STYLE???</p>
<p>Hot Words for the SAT I by Linda Carnevale (Barrons)</p>
<p>this website(100 most common SAT words:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.quia.com/jg/66022list.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.quia.com/jg/66022list.html</a></p>
<p>The simple answer is that BOTH strategies work. In my sessions, my students learn all the verbal strategies and underlying principles of the questions AND they study vocabulary. My vocab lists are a compilation of word lists from various sources that I KNOW represent fairly frequently occurring words on the SAT. The SAT is a STANDARDIZED exam, which means ETS MUST have a certain range of words in mind, so it's entirely possible to predict at least a subset of the words on future exams. Even if only 10 to 15 words (these will usually come from the harder questions, since the easier questions will usually have common, easy words) on the exam may appear on these word lists (I would argue that the figure is higher), these 10 to 15 words COULD mean the difference of 5 or 6 questions, which translates to a lot of points. Of course, ETS also likes to throw new words on the exam all the time, but my students know that they do not need to know ALL the words in the questions to answer them correctly or at least narrow the choices to two. Often, my students can do very well simply knowing 50% or 75% of my word lists, since the rest may come down to working the questions deftly, but the bottom line is that learning (the right) words CAN definitely help. My old SAT students learned 500 to 1000 words. (I had two students in the last three months score 800 and one student score 790 on verbal.) My new SAT students will be learning about 600 to 700.</p>
<p>Nitinrao, I suggest you listen to Xiggi. Obviously you do not know that he has been the expert on the SAT for many years in the old forum and now in the new. </p>
<p>Your memorizing of the 3500 wordlists, if you can actually retain all that(you started a month or two ago?), is the brute force approach. It is like studying for a physics test by doing 1,000 physics problems again and again until you memorize the solutions. This, in my opinion, is a time waster. When you study for a physics exam, you learn the techniques, not memorization. Same goes for the SAT. Its al about practice and technique, and yes, vocabs to a certain degree. Study smarter, not harder.</p>
<p>I agree with Godot. I learned about 1000words and then it was all practice from that point onward.</p>
<p>Godot:
again, you have overloked the problem. Just because ETS picks different words may mean that any no list can predict words. I trust you on that part. But not on the part that ETS picks words out of nowhere. The barron's wordlist is like a Collegiated mini-dictionary. this means that it contains most or all the words that will be needed for college. ETS makes SAT for college preview. so, they will use collegiated words to make sure that we know college level words. By giving most of the collegiated words, Barron's list can be the biggest wordlist-guide. It can't predict the test, but it can show the words that maybe on the test.
AroW_:
I am not an english speaker. in my lifetime, i have read less books. u may have read many books, so u only had to do 1000 words. but if i learn all 3500 collegiated words, it will be the best help for other tests for college:for ex. GRE, SAT, ACT, SAT II, etc..these tests on based on college material, and so based on collegiated words. Now do u believe me that studying collegiated words is to study "harder" and "smarter"??one time study can help in all. (and i do not believe that 1000 words are all the collegiated words we need to know). many ppl in my school agrees with my theory.</p>
<p>well I see you are looking for the greatest list. Well this one, (<a href="http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/160/16098.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/160/16098.html</a>) with 6500 words and 9000 meanings.
This post is kinda a joke.</p>
<p>Nitinrao:</p>
<p>I don't think we are in disagreement. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to go through all 3500 words in the Barron's list (or another similar word list), but I can't expect my students to learn 3500 words, and many of the words will NOT show up on the actual exam. Therefore, I have simply culled about 1000 of the essential words from various sources that have proven to be extremely effective in preparing for the verbal/critical reading section of the SAT.</p>