Best SAT word-vocabulary builder

amb3r
Sun, 28 Oct 2007 23:52:04 +0000

Andrea … When I went through the Barron’s, I said I did 800 words a day in an earlier post on this thread, but after I went through all 3500 words I found 100 that I didn’t know, and about half of those were words I could use in context but didn’t really know the true meaning of. So honestly it wasn’t like I (or galois (theory?), I’m guessing) memorized thousands of words a day.

8parks is correct that if you memorize defs through vocab builders you can retain a general sense of their meaning for perhaps a short period of time. I think that’s probably enough to be of some aid on the SAT. If you want to know how to use a word in context, it’s best to see examples of sentences or passages with that word. When I was learning Barron’s vocab, for every word I did not know, I literally googled that word and read the first three non-dictionary websites that used that word in context. Also I heavily used Merriam Webster’s ‘Word of the Day’ series, for which about 75% of the 100 words I studied were featured. For each word of the day, three to four paragraphs including that word are given. Really try to learn your vocab – don’t just passively memorize a three word definition or you will not know how to use the word.