toppeida

I need to improve my vocabulary, because I do well in every section of the SAT except for the sentence completions, and they're killing my CR score. I have several prep books with vocab lists, but I can't seem to retain half of the words I read. What did you do to help you study vocab words?

franglish

Read. Read. Read really good books. Go to the library.

darkblademaster

Haha, I was in the same position as you are.

I agree with franglish. Reading helps. A lot. Classic novels and magazines like the Economist really help.

(I used a website, actually, for vocab prep as well. The company's called StarCatcher, and I used some of its online vocab tools when I beta-tested for it. It helped me pinpoint the words I didn't retain, and I ended up getting an 800 on the cr section.
StarCatcher if you want to check it out.)

Don't worry too much, though. The sentence completion section is easier to improve on than the reading comprehension section.

Fernando Morient

word smart1, and word smart 2.
with these, after a while, the sc becomes your best friend.

toppeida

thanks to everyone who replied.

Fernando, this might be a stupid question, but what exactly is word smart?

Harambee

^It's a vocabulary list. I'd recommend Direct Hits, however, it has consistently had the most words appear on the SAT. I used to get around 5 wrong on sentence completions, now I get 0 to 1 wrong.

dark knight

^I agree with Harambee. Direct Hits is clearly the best. Preliminary analysis shows that DH did exceptionally well on both versions of the November SAT and totally dominated the International test.

Harambee

^I agree with you dark night. Your analysis of the vocab is the reason I chose Direct Hits. Kudos to you

swans004

Another vote for reading as much as you can - anything from novels to newspapers. Stuff like the Economist is helpful (and if that floats your boat, great!), but it's not necessary to read something so dry or esoteric. Classic fiction is just fine, too. The key is to challenge yourself a bit, and LOOK UP any words you come across you don't know (for some reason that part of it doesn't always happen.) I also am a big advocate of Word-Nerd: vocabulary test prep for the SAT and PSAT for vocab. The words are organized to be very easy to remember, and the quizzes are constantly changing to really test your knowledge. Lots of luck to you!

odyssey212

What I usually do is scan through a vocab list once a day and circle 10 or so words that I've seen before, but dont actually know the definitions of. For that day I make my elf focus on thoses words and try to use them in conversation/writing if the opportunity arises. It works pretty well, usually CS is the easiest part of the SAT for me.