Which Vocabulary Book Performed Best on the October 2010 SATs and PSATs?

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

<p>INTRODUCTION</p>

<p>All of the vocabulary books and lists claim to have "the words you need to know" to ace the SAT. But is this really true? The three October SATs (Saturday, Sunday, and International) and the two PSATs provide a unique opportunity to evaluate the performance of the leading vocabulary books and lists. For purposes of comparison I analyzed Direct Hits (2011), Barrons (25th edition), Princeton Review's Hit Parade (2008 edition), Hot Words (4th edition), and Sparknotes 1000 Most Commonly Used SAT Words. All of these sources have been discussed on CC. I did not analyze Kaplan or REA because of their poor performances and lack of attention on CC. I omitted Rocket Review because it is no longer in print.</p>

2

<p>just focus on Barron’s 3500 and get all questions correct.</p>

3

<p>…and???</p>

4

<p>THE WORDS - PART I:</p>

<p>The three SATs and two PSATs had a combined total of 78 level 3 - 5 vocabulary words. I compiled these words from the consolidated lists posted on CC. It is possible that this list will change a little as CCers remember more questions. Here are the 78 words (Part I):</p>

<p>Assuage, conjecture, conundrum, diffident, duplicity, elusive, enigma, indigenous, inquisition, meticulous, overwrought, plausible, pristine, pulverize, quixotic, slight, unaffected, unconventional, vituperative, analogy, anecdote, benign, circumspect, colloquial, decorum, discerning, eclectic, emphatic, enmity, erroneous, illicit, misnomer, ornate, paradox, penchant, permeate, prolific, rebuttal, resolute, reconciling, slovenly, traversing, trenchant, unremitting</p>

5

<p>Barron’s 3500 list gives you confidence that whatever words they put in it you could get 600 as a minimum.</p>

6

<p>THE WORDS - PART II</p>

<p>Here are the remaining words:
acolyte, appalled, apoplectic, charismatic, complicity, dichotomy, empathize, exonerate, ignominy, nostalgic, proscribed, provisional, rampant, ruthless, spare, ubiquitous, upbraid, vanguard, watershed, apocryphal, cerebral, coin, curtail, disparage, elation, exemplary, foreboding, ludicrous, profound, punctilious, sanguine, steadfast, severity, visceral</p>

7

<p>So how did the five vocabulary books/lists perform on these 78 words? Here are the results:</p>

<ol>
<li>Direct Hits (2011): 512 words, 52 hits, one hit per 9.8 words, 10.4 hits per test</li>
<li>Barron’s (25th edition): 3,500 words, 70 hits, one hit per 50 words, 14 hits per test</li>
<li>Sparknotes: 1,000 words, 44 hits, one hit per 22.7 words, 8.8 hits per test</li>
<li>PR’s Hit Parade: 250 words, 15 hits, one hit per 16.6 words, 3 hits per test</li>
<li>Hot Words (4th edition): 402 words, one hit per 36.5 words, 2.2 hits per test</li>
</ol>

8

<p>You’re missing: buttress (lol), affronted, canonical
^^ from wed. PSAT</p>

9

<p>Thanks for crunching the numbers for us! I’m about to go out and by DH!</p>

10

<p>COMMENTARY:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Direct Hits (2011): DH continues to be a top performer. Unlike the other books, it is updated and revised every year. For example, the 2011 edition contains 74 new words. DH provides vivid examples that promote retention. DH is well known for its eclectic mix of pop culture and historic examples. It is interesting to note that many of its historic examples generated hits on last year’s APUSH, APEURO, and AP World History exams.</p></li>
<li><p>Barron’s (25th). Barron’s list of 3,500 words continues to be the Mount Everest of vocabulary words. But how many students have the commitment and dedication needed to master the entire list? Is memorizing a list of 3,500 words really worth the time? Each student will have to answer these questions for himself/herself.</p></li>
<li><p>Sparknotes: Sparknotes provides a solid list of words that performed well on the SATs. However, it should be noted that Sparknotes only scored 7 hits on the two PSATs. </p></li>
<li><p>Princeton Review Hit Parade: At one time, the PR Hit Parade was the gold standard of vocabulary lists. However, this is no longer the case. The Hit Parade only generated a disappointing 3 hits per test. While Cracking the SAT is still a very good introductory book, students would be well-advised to use DH and Sparknotes.</p></li>
<li><p>Hot Words (4th edition): Hot Words boasts that it provides students with “the words you need to know to get a high Critical Reading score.” The facts tell a very different story. Hot Words (4th edition) only generated 11 hits on the 3 SATs and NO hits on the two October PSATs. Enough said.</p></li>
</ol>

11

<p>Dark Knight - thank you for your very useful update. Did the words you listed come just from correct answers on the sentence completions on each test?</p>

12

<p>Good question. The words come from both Sentence Completions AND Critical Reading questions.</p>

13

<p>Hey Dark Knight, hope college is going well. It is great to see you are still doing this research. It was so helpful to me. Sorry to read that RR is no longer in print. I remember one of the hardest words I had was mellifluous.</p>

14

<p>The problem with this type or analysis is that the inclusion or exclusion of words is as silly as it is subjective. </p>

<p>From the first list, there is no reason to include words such as</p>

<p>duplicity, elusive, enigma, indigenous, inquisition, meticulous, plausible, pristine, pulverize, slight, unaffected, unconventional, analogy, anecdote, benign, circumspect, colloquial, decorum, discerning, eclectic, emphatic, enmity, erroneous, illicit, misnomer, ornate, paradox, penchant, permeate, prolific, rebuttal, resolute, reconciling, </p>

<p>From the second list …</p>

<p>appalled, charismatic, complicity, empathize, exonerate, nostalgic, provisional, rampant, ruthless, spare, ubiquitous, vanguard, watershed, apocryphal, cerebral, coin, curtail, disparage, elation, exemplary, foreboding, ludicrous, profound, sanguine, steadfast, severity, visceral </p>

<p>Now, run your analysis again!</p>

15

<p>The analysis presented above is both realistic and useful. It is realistic because it is based upon the realities of the critical reading section of the SAT/PSAT. ETS questions are categorized into five levels of difficulty. The overwhelming majority of CCers want to achieve a CR score above a 600. In order to do that, they will have to correctly answer Level 3 - 5 questions. Challenging vocabulary is the hallmark of these questions.</p>

<p>Many CCers spend a great deal of time studying vocabulary words. The analysis presented above is useful because it asks a pertinent question: which vocabulary books/lists performed the best on the five October tests? The answers I found are revealing and useful. For example, an International student who studied the words in Direct Hits would have been rewarded with 17 hits on the October test. If the same student had relied upon Princeton Review’s Hit Parade he/she would have been rewarded with just 6 hits. That is a potential difference of over 100 critical reading points. Similarly, a PSAT student who relied upon Hot Words would have learned 403 words and scored ZERO hits. This is useful information!</p>

<p>Xiggi, I believe that your nihilistic approach will not help CCers on this board. Healthy skepticism is good. However, a skepticism that denies all existence is useless. It is worth remembering that nothing will come from nothing.</p>

16

<p>This is very usefull infomation!! Thank you dark knight!!</p>

17

<p>This thead and its author are the best!!!</p>

18

<p>

</p>

<p>Dark Knight, before you label my approach nihilistic, you might consider actually looking into what I wrote in the past on this subject. Just as you, I DID analyses of word lists.</p>

<p>The basic fallacy of your analysis stems from using the difficulty of the questions as the criterion for the difficulty of the vocabulary. As we know, ETS could use extremely simple words and write an extremely hard question, and vice versa. </p>

<p>However, that technical angle is not really needed; all that is needed is to see that your lists include words such as:</p>

<p>“slight, unaffected, unconventional, analogy, anecdote, benign, colloquial, discerning, eclectic, emphatic, erroneous, illicit, misnomer, ornate, paradox, penchant, rebuttal, resolute, reconciling, appalled, charismatic, complicity, exonerate, nostalgic, provisional, rampant, ruthless, spare, cerebral, coin, curtail, disparage, elation, exemplary, foreboding, ludicrous, profound, steadfast, severity, visceral.”</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Do you consider the words listed above, and especially the ones repeated below to be challenging for someone who want to achieve more than 600?</p>

<p>Slight? analogy? misnomer? paradox? spare? coin?</p>

<p>The knowledge of vocabulary plays a ROLE in scoring high on the SAT, but it is hardly the cornerstone of the test, and the use of words lists that do not offer any context remains the worst use of one’s time --except for unique cases.</p>

19

<p>Wow, Xiggi, Dark Knight has been doing this analysis for the last 2 years and many CCers have found it very helpful, including me when I was taking the SAT. Maybe those words aren’t hard in your opinion (as an adult out of college), but I think if you read through the recent threads you will see that many students felt a number of those words were hard in the way they were used on the test. Dark Knight did not make those level 3-5 words, the College Board did. They must have done their own analysis of what 16-18 year old students find hard.</p>

20

<p>

</p>

<p>From the day I joined CC in 2003, I have seen this issue debated more than any other. From the mostly ineffective Barron’s list to secretive lists such as Test$master’s, there is an endless supply of lists pretending to be the Holy Grail for the SAT.</p>

<p>During my first months on CC, I did take the time to post several vocabulary lists. Since I was analyzing the effectiveness of such lists, I thought it would helpful to list the contents. In this thread, I will revive some very old posts from their pixelized grave.</p>

<p>Before you get overly excited, please note that I STILL consider the rote memorization of words to be one of the worst preparation possible. I actually compiled the Barron’s list to demonstrate how ineffective and how irrelevant it was to the SAT. The only thing Barron’s excels at is to “predict” the words that WERE in past tests. A blindfolded monkey pointing at a few pages of your Webster would probably do better than Barron’s by a large margin. </p>

<p>People whose primary language is not English might find some help in READING the lists but I would never recommend to anyone to STUDY the words.</p>

<p>[College</a> Confidential Discussion](<a href=“http://www.collegeconfidential.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?69/9808]College”>http://www.collegeconfidential.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?69/9808)</p>

<p>And the rest of a previous post:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/764274-vocabulary-lists-pros-cons-old-links.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/764274-vocabulary-lists-pros-cons-old-links.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;