<p>Damn, my summer reading is just "Brave New World". God bless honors classes cause they are freaking easy.</p>
<p>just another quick comment, Xylem101-type, to xitammarg: Well the thing is that your approach is very theoretical. I, and I assume most internationals, would waste considerable amount of time scrutinizing word roots and speculating on word meanings(which by the way is unquestionably fallible sometimes). And test-day "scrutiny" cannot be compared with test-day "vocabulary confidence". The latter saves time and hassle.
For some reason I believe that you already know a good whole of Barron's, Sparknotes', PR's or whose-not word lists. I am not "accusing" you of memorization, it's just the way it is, some people have rather strong vocabulary from intensive reading, etc.
I suspect you'd be craving for memorization, weren't you to have such a strong vocabulary.</p>
<p>In my sense the best way to prepare, in order of importance, is, abundant practice+question-type study, eclectic reading and memorization. The combination of the three + some diligence and resolve should make a brilliant score.</p>
<p>sorry this response is delayed--i've been on vacation for the last week or so and haven't kept up with my cc posting. apologies. amu asked me to respond to the questions he asked in posts 51 and 52, so here goes:</p>
<ol>
<li> "As a side note, since you have a degree in a language-related major, do you feel if I start a reading habit now I would eventually improve my English or do you feel that it's quite late to start."</li>
</ol>
<p>This is a good question, though it's bigger than just the SAT.</p>
<p>The conventional wisdom on this situation is that there's a window in the first five of years or so of life in which it's much easier to pick up extra languages. After that, the conventional wisdom is that it's much harder, almost impossible, to pick up another language.</p>
<p>To an extent, I agree with this. But I don't agree with the notion that it's impossible to pick up another language after you're 5 years old. Too many people have successfully mastered foreign lanuages as adults for this to be true. In fact, many of them become so immersed in their new languages that they forget most of their original language--this happened to my grandmother, who forgot german in favor of english, as well as to other adults I know.</p>
<p>So it's never too late to improve your skills in another language, though I do think it's probably easier the younger you are. In that sense, I think it would be a great idea to start reading widely in English. It can only help your overall mastery.</p>
<p>Whether this will help you in an appreciable way on the SAT is a different question. I wouldn't really expect it to--there's not a whole bunch of time, and the SAT is different enough from reguar reading that I don't know if reading in the real world would do a lot to help your SAT reading. I could be wrong. But it's not the approach I'd use in your situation to raise your score (just to be clear, I DEFINITELY recommend it as an approach to raise your overall familiarity with English--just not necessarily your SAT score).</p>
<ol>
<li> "As a side note, do you feel Kaplan's pratice test results are inflated or deflated?"
I used to teach for them. I couldn't swear to it in a courtroom, but I'm 99% certain I remember the guy who ran my center saying the test questions were skewed on the free sample tests they gave to get new customers.</li>
</ol>
<p>Whether this is the case or not, I still wouldn't rely on Kaplan's practice tests. I would only ever use the real CB tests. CB is the only source of real SAT questions, and the SAT is what you're preparing for.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>"I regret not starting SAT prep earlier. Do you think I've blown my chance at a top score?"
Not at all. Prepping for the SAT doesn't have to take a long time. In fact, it shouldn't. The question isn't just how much time you put into it, but how intelligently you're prepping. So no, I don't think you should worry about the amount of time you have before the October test.</p></li>
<li><p>"I don't think I'm incompetent but rather have confidence I can improve. I can feel how my results above are not even close to my real abilities."
That's the mentality you want to have. Good job!</p></li>
<li><p>"My reach goal is to get 2200-2300 (Best would be: M 800 W 750 CR 750)" This is a personal thing with me, and I realize it's maybe not how everybody looks at situations like this, but why not shoot for 2400? If you can get 750 you can hit 800 :) Plus I think you'll come to see that the proper approach applies equally well to all SAT questions; after a while, the notion of question difficulty begins to break down.</p></li>
<li><p>"All I know is a triangle's interior angles add up to 180... However, I'm a good learner, especially when it comes to math."
This could conceivably be a difficulty, because SAT Math is very geometry-heavy. I'd recommend that you brush up on all the math concepts in the blue book. Once you're familiar with those, you'll know that you know every single math concept the SAT can ask you about. From there, it's just a question of strategy.</p></li>
</ol>
<hr>
<p>Also, you didn't explicitly ask, but I'd recommend that you take a timed practice SAT from the blue book to get an idea of where you stand now, apart from what Kaplan says.</p>
<p>Hope that helps--again, sorry for the delayed response.</p>
<p>mike</p>
<p>I am the director of a college prep program in Boston that specializes in preparing international students--mostly Korean, but some Japanese and Chinese kids as well--for the SAT. A lot of my job is to help kids specifically like you, Amu, I believe: smart nonnative speakers with big ambitions. We pull a lot from the international student population at snotty East Coast boarding schools. :) (Students at snotty EC boarding schools, relax: you know I love you.) So I thought I'd add my 2 cents.</p>
<p>All of these questions become somewhat simpler and easier to grasp conceptually when you realize one major principle: memorizing words produces a linear increase in vocabulary, whereas reading lots of books produces a cubic or even exponential increase in vocabulary. That's it. That one rule alone makes all of these patterns clear. </p>
<p>Why? Well, it should be obvious why memorizing words produces a linear increase in vocabulary. You're just adding words at a more or less constant rate. (Actually, this is an oversimplification: you do become much faster at memorizing words over time. But still, the effect is nothing like the cumulative effect of reading.) </p>
<p>Reading produces a cubic or exponential gain in vocabulary for at least two main reasons:</p>
<p>1) As you read, you become a faster reader--like, three to four times as fast over time. That means you're exposed to three to four times as many words. So reading a lot not only helps you learn words, it triples or quadruples the rate at which it's possible for you to learn words. Get it?</p>
<p>2) As you read a lot, you become a better reader, which makes reading more fun, which makes it much more likely that you will occasionally read for pleasure, or at least be able to finish all of your assigned reading for school without cutting any corners. This means that you are not only learning more words per hour, you are also learning words for more hours in the day.</p>
<p>There's a lot else that goes in to it but I'm getting boring, I know, so I'll stop. </p>
<p>Understanding this simple principle--that memorizing words produces a linear increase in vocabulary, whereas reading lots of books produces a cubic or even exponential increase in vocabulary--makes a lot of other stuff clear. </p>
<p>In a new window, go to the wikipedia article on exponential growth:</p>
<p>Now find the graph. Pretend that the x-axis is the amount of time (days or weeks) that you have to memorize words. Now, the red line is how many words you will learn by memorizing. The green line is how many words you will learn by reading. When you're not very far out on the x-axis (like if you have only a few days or weeks to learn words), you might be better off memorizing, at least as far as vocab acquisition goes. But before too long, the green line starts to <em>skyrocket</em>. That's why you need to get on the reading train, even as a nonnative speaker.</p>
<p>The absolute fastest path, though, would be if you could use a program of both memorization and reading for a few days and weeks while you are working on your reading, and then after a while--once your reading is strong and you know most common classroom words--you let the memorization go. That's what you should probably be doing if you have time.</p>
<p>The first step for you should be a list called the Academic Word List. I won't get into its research basis, although the original study that produced this list had some rocking methodology. The point is that these words are super-common in academic writing, and they show up a lot on the SAT (even though they are easy), and a lot of nonnative speakers don't know all of them. Google "Academic Word List" and learn <em>all those words</em>. Right away.</p>
<p>Start reading as well, but don't just grab books with lots of hard words--research has shown that you have to know most of the words in a text already in order to learn new words from exposure alone. Choose books that seem to be at a comfortable level for you, and make it your goal to read a large number of pages.</p>
<p>I'll stop now, though I could go on and on.</p>
<p>Also, I would like to add to xittamarg's response to your question about whether you're too late to learn: no. :) You are definitely not. You can definitely build your reading skill and even learn to love reading, and build your vocab over time as well. I see it happen every day.</p>
<p>Hey, great thread.</p>
<p>I was wondering, could there be an "in-between" solution as to the memorizing and logical approach?</p>
<p>For example, grouping a group of words under a general meaning such as "evil" or "well liked" or "knowledgeable" or something like that.</p>
<p>xitammarg, using this positive/negative connotation, isn't there always the risk that even one word that you mistakenly label the wrong connotation could throw your answer off completely?</p>
<p>@journey--</p>
<p>great questions.</p>
<p>i think there's room for an in-between approach. in fact, i think there are many ways you could approach these questions.</p>
<p>in theory, if you could somehow memorize all the words that were going to be on a particular SAT, with no mistakes, you should do fine. the question, to me, is whether this is practical. i don't think it is.</p>
<p>making mistakes with the positive/negative thing isn't the end of the world. one of the things you learn to do when you're practicing that approach is to feel when you've made a mistake. this is complicated to explain and hard to understand through a purely textual medium like this forum, so i'll make an analogy with crossword puzzles.</p>
<p>when you do a crossword puzzle, you aren't just looking at individual clues or squares. you're looking at a web of clues and answers. if you make a mistake on one clue, you eventually come to realize that something is wrong with the puzzle as a whole because things don't fit together after a while.</p>
<p>similarly, when you're trying to classify the words in the answer choices of an SAT sc question and generate possible meanings for each word, you'll find that any mistakes eventually make themselves evident because the whole solution to the problem breaks down. this is one of the things you sort of learn to recognize through practice.</p>
<p>of course, there might be times when you just flat-out make a mistake. it can always happen, no matter what approach you use.</p>
<p>
Junior Member</p>
<p>Join Date: Jan 2006 Threads: 2 Posts: 191 I am the director of a college prep program in Boston that specializes in preparing international students--mostly Korean, but some Japanese and Chinese kids as well--for the SAT. A lot of my job is to help kids specifically like you, Amu, I believe: smart nonnative speakers with big ambitions. We pull a lot from the international student population at snotty East Coast boarding schools. (Students at snotty EC boarding schools, relax: you know I love you.) So I thought I'd add my 2 cents.</p>
<p>All of these questions become somewhat simpler and easier to grasp conceptually when you realize one major principle: memorizing words produces a linear increase in vocabulary, whereas reading lots of books produces a cubic or even exponential increase in vocabulary. That's it. That one rule alone makes all of these patterns clear. </p>
<p>Why? Well, it should be obvious why memorizing words produces a linear increase in vocabulary. You're just adding words at a more or less constant rate. (Actually, this is an oversimplification: you do become much faster at memorizing words over time. But still, the effect is nothing like the cumulative effect of reading.) </p>
<p>Reading produces a cubic or exponential gain in vocabulary for at least two main reasons:</p>
<p>1) As you read, you become a faster reader--like, three to four times as fast over time. That means you're exposed to three to four times as many words. So reading a lot not only helps you learn words, it triples or quadruples the rate at which it's possible for you to learn words. Get it?</p>
<p>2) As you read a lot, you become a better reader, which makes reading more fun, which makes it much more likely that you will occasionally read for pleasure, or at least be able to finish all of your assigned reading for school without cutting any corners. This means that you are not only learning more words per hour, you are also learning words for more hours in the day.</p>
<p>There's a lot else that goes in to it but I'm getting boring, I know, so I'll stop. </p>
<p>Understanding this simple principle--that memorizing words produces a linear increase in vocabulary, whereas reading lots of books produces a cubic or even exponential increase in vocabulary--makes a lot of other stuff clear. </p>
<p>In a new window, go to the wikipedia article on exponential growth:</p>
<p>Now find the graph. Pretend that the x-axis is the amount of time (days or weeks) that you have to memorize words. Now, the red line is how many words you will learn by memorizing. The green line is how many words you will learn by reading. When you're not very far out on the x-axis (like if you have only a few days or weeks to learn words), you might be better off memorizing, at least as far as vocab acquisition goes. But before too long, the green line starts to <em>skyrocket</em>. That's why you need to get on the reading train, even as a nonnative speaker.</p>
<p>The absolute fastest path, though, would be if you could use a program of both memorization and reading for a few days and weeks while you are working on your reading, and then after a while--once your reading is strong and you know most common classroom words--you let the memorization go. That's what you should probably be doing if you have time.</p>
<p>The first step for you should be a list called the Academic Word List. I won't get into its research basis, although the original study that produced this list had some rocking methodology. The point is that these words are super-common in academic writing, and they show up a lot on the SAT (even though they are easy), and a lot of nonnative speakers don't know all of them. Google "Academic Word List" and learn <em>all those words</em>. Right away.</p>
<p>Start reading as well, but don't just grab books with lots of hard words--research has shown that you have to know most of the words in a text already in order to learn new words from exposure alone. Choose books that seem to be at a comfortable level for you, and make it your goal to read a large number of pages.</p>
<p>I'll stop now, though I could go on and on.</p>
<p>Also, I would like to add to xittamarg's response to your question about whether you're too late to learn: no. You are definitely not. You can definitely build your reading skill and even learn to love reading, and build your vocab over time as well. I see it happen every day.
</p>
<p>Great response - I have a question though. I'm generally an active reader (reading is one of my favorite hobbies!), but I don't read as frequently as I used to anymore due to the tight schedule I have now with schoolwork and SAT studies. If I started, from tonight, to read books (up until my October - I might change the date to November - SAT), is it possible for me to increase my reading speed? I'm a bit of a slow reader, and I'd really like to read all those CR passages on the exams instead of just skim them (I'm not an efficient skimmer when it comes to CR passages). Also, should I time myself for let's say, 15 minutes, and see how many pages of any book I could read? Would this help increase my reading speed? </p>
<p>I'm also going to read books (and analyze passages in magazines such as TIME, NYT, etc.) in hopes of increasing my vocabulary.</p>
<p>I've started to read HP and the Deathly Hallows (I'm not sure if that will help much with the SAT, but I'm just reading it for pleasure!) and I will start The Fountainhead by Ayn Rynd.</p>
<p>I went on website (I forgot the link though) about two weeks ago to test my reading speed while timed. I read at a rate of 231 wpm (words per minute), which is pretty average and not at a high-speed reading level. :/</p>
<p>To back you up, xittamarg--for curiosity's sake, and for curriculum planning purposes, and because I work largely with an ESL population, I am constantly trying to figure out the smallest possible list that you could theoretically memorize to know all the words on the SAT. This is just a thought experiment, of course; I would never try to make anyone do it. My current list is 24,000 words long, and that's after months of research. My objective is to get it down to 8,000-11,000 words, in order to have a large set of terms to use for curriculum design purposes, but I think even that might be too few words to achieve total coverage of the exam, and it's still way, way too many words to memorize.</p>
<p>HP and the Deathly Hallows has some SAT vocab. :)</p>
<p>@GardenMaiden, I'm glad that you found some of what I said helpful. You could certainly increase your reading speed. If your goal is to improve your long-term ability to learn vocabulary, I think it makes sense to work on reading speed. But if your goal is to have enough time to finish CR sections, I think it might be more helpful to think in terms of improving your test-taking time management skills. (xittamarg, what do you think?)</p>
<p>I just put a student through a speed reading course, and she tripled her reading speed. Now she reads 400+ words a minute most of the time (although she's slower on SAT passages). Her new-and-improved reading speed will definitely help her in schol and will help her learn words more quickly. But she still struggles with time management on the SAT CR passages, because she reads too carefully. She's scared to skip around.</p>
<p>For most slow readers, it's most helpful to figure out which parts of the CR passages you can skim (in my opinion, the middle of all the supporting paragraphs), and then do it. :)</p>
<p>If you want to work on your reading speed specifically for the SAT, here's the fastest and most direct way I know of: get a book of essays like the SAT ones (reading speeds vary a lot depending on the time of material you're reading, so it's important that you practice speed reading <em>on SAT-like material</em>, which probably means an anthology of contemporary essays or a work of classic literature). Then time yourself. Once you know how fast you read, try reading sprints. Figure out exactly how many pages (including partial pages) you can read in five minutes. Then try to read that many pages in four minutes. Then in three minutes. Then in two minutes. Then in one minute. You won't achieve full comprehension, of course; it's enough to understand something of what you're reading. Then read for five minutes again at closer to a normal rate (not too slow, though; push yourself a little bit) and see if you can read faster than you did the first time. You may feel like you're reading quite slowly, too. :)</p>
<p>You can also just try to read faster. I know this sounds stupid, but it works for a lot of people. The trick is just to set goals for yourself as you read: figure out how many pages you can read comfortably in a set amount of time, and then try to read more pages in the same amount of time. You can also just push yourself to read slightly faster than is comfortable for you. </p>
<p>If this doesn't work for you, you can try a book called Triple Your Reading Speed, which does what it says. It's full of bizarre-looking drills and eye charts :) that change the way your eyes focus and move over the page, and it works. But it will take you a long time to master, so it's not a great solution to SAT time management problems. Better to learn to read selectively and aggressively.</p>
<p>Again, while learning to read more quickly may be helpful in the long run--in school, in vocabulary acquisition, and in life--it's probably not the most direct way to deal with a time management crisis on the SAT Critical Reading section.</p>
<p>I used tactics..
convival- con is bad and viv is like life so not lively
imp[erious- imperious curse from Harry Potter not lively
and teh word which is like solicitng...well when you solicit you hang out...
so melodramatic--means full of emotion and life ..so I chose D</p>
<p>^^convivial means merry, festive so I think you met con-with (in Spanish) viv-life. Yeah this is an informative thread.</p>
<p>D. Histrionic. I don't study vocab, ever.</p>
<p>brosfam, how about telling us your method?</p>
<p>I don't really have one. I've never really studied vocab, except when I was in grade school.</p>
<p>@lotf:</p>
<p>yowza! 24k words is a lot. though i'm sure there are cc'ers who would do it if you gave them the list :)</p>
<p>i agree with your advice to gardenmaiden, too.</p>
<p>i'm no speed-reading expert, by any means, but i just wanted to add on to what you said above. one of the techniques my students have found helpful is the "finger-drag" method. to use it, you start following the text with your index finger while you read at your normal pace (exactly like your elementary school teachers probably told you not to do). when you've become accustomed to reading the text over your finger, you start moving the finger faster and faster through the text, always keeping your eyes on the words over your finger. when you're up to a decently fast pace, you can take your finger away again and just move your eyes at that pace.</p>
<p>this method isn't the absolute best for speed-reading for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that it moves you through the text linearly and encourages you to read every word on the page with equal attention.</p>
<p>but it isn't bad as a way to get used to the idea of reading faster, as you mentioned. also, and most importantly for standardized testing, it encourages you not to read the same phrase over and over absent-mindedly, which a lot of test-takers do without realizing it, and without adding to their comprehension.</p>
<p>and i'm gonna have to pick up a copy of that book. that's a great title :)</p>
<p>Histrionic. Sounds like hysterics, doesn't it? That's how I figured the answer.</p>