<p>I have RR core words (323 words), PR hit Parade , Barron's hot list and 3500 word list, Spark notes 1000 most common SAT words. Please let me know which 1 should i start learning the words .</p>
<p>P.s.- i have time till may . and pls let me know how many words should i be doing per day</p>
<p>Dude, memorizing huge lists of words is absolutely, positively silly. Don't do it! </p>
<p>Take practice tests and just look up words you didn't know. That way, you're being productive and you're learning by doing rather than just racking up random words. </p>
<p>This applies to SC answer choices, passages, and passage answer choices.</p>
<p>EDIT: But if you must, then go with the PR list + RR list. Barron's list is a freaking dictionary and sparknotes is, well...yeah. </p>
<p>If you can, buy the direct hits books. They actually just go on real SAT tests and find words that are important. It's the lazy-man's way of learning the words, but it's damned effective.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Dude, memorizing huge lists of words is absolutely, positively silly. Don't do it!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Memorizing Barron's infamous 3500 word list (which includes tons of words that have never appeared in anything the CB has published) is indeed quite silly. However, there's no way around memorizing lists of words if you want to get the SC questions right.</p>
<p>Start with RR's list. It's the most concise. I created my own list using the words that appeared in practice tests, the CB question of the day, and other smaller lists. If you don't have the time to do that, then Sparknotes is pretty good.</p>
<p>do RR then either princeton or sparknotes. make sure you study them well. it's not that silly if you're dedicated to getting a good score. 3 sentence completion questions can be the difference between a 800 and a 770.</p>
<p>Barron<code>s 3500 words don</code>t only help you do well on SC.They help you for the Reading Comprehension questions,and the writing sections (sometimes there are a lot of unfamiliar words0
ALso they help you write a great essay ,using sophisticated language.
Not to mention that these 'college level' words actually prepare you for college.
But if you only want to prepare for the SC,just take the DHs</p>
<p>^For a minute there, it actually sounded like you were ENDORSING the Barron's 3500 list for the SAT...</p>
<p>yeah, don't do it. If you studied for the next year, 3500/365 is about 10 words a day. No way in hell you're going to study THAT much (even if you're Ivan)</p>
<p>Memorizing words list can't hurt, but I don't think it's the best method to go about raising your CR score. Reading good literature, and publications like The New York Times on a regular basis and looking up any unknown words will do a lot more for your score than simple memorization. Why? It increases your general comprehension of writing while forcing you to put the words in a context to properly understand the piece. There really are only a maximum of 10-12 straight vocab questions, and at least 2, if not 3 or 4, of the answer choices in each one can usually be eliminated out of common knowledge and/or logical deduction. The chances of you coming across a vocab word that you previously memorized is relatively slim, and after memorizing potentially thousands of them, you might not even remember them at all!</p>
<p>My advice is to take practice tests, lots and lots of practice tests; it's been shown time and time again to be the best way to prepare, while doing a good amount of in-depth reading of relatively complex stuff. The Princeton Review also has a great explanation of the strategy behind CR questions, so I recommend that as well. </p>
<p>If you have to memorize lists out of compulsion, then at least create a sentence that fits the vocab word in, and make a list of its synonyms and antonyms, it'll help you remember the word, and train your mind to think about a word fully.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It increases your general comprehension of writing while forcing you to put the words in a context to properly understand the piece.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, and reading is a great way to help your reading comprehension skills. However, reading comprehension does not help you with SC questions if you don't know what the answer choices mean. </p>
<p>
[quote]
at least 2, if not 3 or 4, of the answer choices in each one can usually be eliminated out of common knowledge and/or logical deduction
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, in most questions you can generally eliminate 2 answer choices. (This is not true on many level 5 questions, however). And if you choose not to memorize lists of SAT words, this leaves you to guess among 3 answer choices, giving you a 33% of getting that question right--and that's assuming you didn't falsely eliminate a choice. The idea behind memorizing big lists of SAT words (not random words you may find in the New York Times) is to increase your "chances" of getting difficult SC questions that contain 5 answer choices you're familiar with. The reading comprehension required for SC questions is minimal, especially compared with that required for Passage questions.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If you have to memorize lists out of compulsion, then at least create a sentence that fits the vocab word in, and make a list of its synonyms and antonyms, it'll help you remember the word, and train your mind to think about a word fully.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>But if you have a compulsion to prepare yourself to answer SC questions correctly, don't spend your time doing this, unless you have over a year to prep (which isn't extremely uncommon). Depending on your level of vocabulary you'll need to memorize between 300 and 3000 words in order to have a decent chance at getting every SC question right. </p>
<p>The bad news is that there is no way around it: you must memorize lists of words.</p>
<p>The good news is that the SAT is very pattern-orientated. Once you start memorizing "SAT words" you'll find that the number of words you don't know among those 19 SC questions gets smaller and smaller.</p>
<p>I got no SC's wrong on either SAT or PSAT, Godfatherbob, and I didn't study a single word from a word-list.</p>
<p>Maybe I was too rash in dismissing vocab lists, I guess I was just suspicious of them because they've never done anything for me, but I stand by the point of creating sentences and making synonym/antonym lists for words, it WILL help you remember your words better than simply drilling a definition into your head, and using a thesaurus to look at synonym/antonym lists for words will not only help you remember, but by associating complex words with simpler, more familiar ones, the question will be far easier to answer. </p>
<p>The OP has over 4 months to prepare, if he parcels out his time efficiently, he could very easily do this for a large list of words.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I got no SC's wrong on either SAT or PSAT, Godfatherbob, and I didn't study a single word from a word-list.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That doesn't mean that memorizing words doesn't help. That means that you already had a very strong vocabulary and/or got lucky and got easy SC questions. </p>
<p>
[quote]
The OP has over 4 months to prepare, if he parcels out his time efficiently, he could very easily do this for a large list of words.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yea I suppose he could. It's just that people don't generally spend their time well :p</p>
<p>Just wondering, what's RR?</p>
<p>Rocket review.It is a prep book</p>