<p>flash cards are the asain way to go. … the normal way ppl learn is by reading but at the beginning of ur senior year, its a bit too late for that</p>
<p>Memorizing words requires pretty hard work. Many people suggest using funny pictures to make the head capture the definitions but I’m so lazy and myself I don’t like it. So I just learn word by word in flashcards
Moreover, how do you guys read the vocab-improvement story like Mayan Mission ?? I read for only 5 pages and they’re loaded with vocab :)</p>
<p>Flash cards from Barron’s SAT book. Also read a lot of articles on New York Times and Economist and memorized words that I didn’t understand. Continued to read and retain the words that I memorized.</p>
<p>Flash cards, using Rocket Review’s list of SAT words.</p>
<p>Biggest waste of time. (To be fair of course, I wasn’t all that rigorous with my prep)</p>
<p>I got a 780 on CR. Knowing spanish helped a bit, but overall, I just knew the vocabularly beforehand.</p>
<p>I never prepared for a thing on the SAT…I think I scored well on CR (780) because I’ve always been a reader. I think the best way to learn is not by rote memorization, but by paying attention to thinks like grammar and vocabulary when you read, whether it be for school or pleasure. The vocabulary really isn’t that hard. I got past questions I didn’t know by first eliminating the answers I knew were wrong, then figuring out the answer based on the context…the SAT isn’t really testing your ‘scholastic aptitude’, or your vocab, it’s testing your ability to take tests. So if you want to prepare, work on your test-taking skills.</p>
<p>It’s better to actually know the definition of the specific word. But there are so many words out there that it’s almost impossible to memorize them all. That is where roots come in handy–making educated guesses on words that you are unfamiliar with.</p>
<p>I’ve found that the best way to learn words is, as people have said, to read. But this method takes many, many hours, which the busy high school student does not have.</p>
<p>To increase your vocabulary more rapidly, flash cards are very useful. If you can make them yourself, that usually helps even more; physically writing out the cards creates more brain connections to cement the definition in your mind. Study books are good, too, but don’t limit yourself to those written by the big names like Princeton Review and Kaplan. I used a workbook-style book (“1100 Words You Need To Know”) that had reading passages and exercises to first introduce you to the word and then to reinforce it.</p>
<p>One small thing that helps is paying attention to words being used around you. When you come across an unknown word in magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, etc. write it down and look it up when you get the chance. You never know–a word you randomly memorized might come to your rescue on the exam. : )</p>
<p>Edit: also, a friend of mine showed me a book that takes a slightly different approach to vocabulary. It’s called “Vocabulary Cartoons: SAT Word Power” and it has little cartoons to illustrate each word. Some are corny and a few are genuinely funny, and they all have captions with mnemonic devices that go along with the cartoon. See if that sort of thing works for you. Everybody’s brains work differently. Ultimately, whatever works best for you is the best approach.</p>
<p>Reading, and oddly TV, helps the most. </p>
<p>My favorite commercial approach to SAT vocab is [Amazon.com:</a> Top 500 SAT Words Shower Curtain: Kitchen & Dining](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Top-500-Words-Shower-Curtain/dp/B000UI8U68]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Top-500-Words-Shower-Curtain/dp/B000UI8U68) I always wanted one for no reason.</p>
<p>repeat as much as we can</p>
<p>don’t waste your life memorizing words…that’s really really sad.
just learn root words and try reading…</p>
<p>Flashcards. I would just carry 20 or so cards around at a time and when I was walking to school alone or when I had to wait somewhere, I just whipped them out. Most words I just couldn’t remember, I thought of a funny mental example.</p>
<p>I pick a few words a day and try to remember them. Then, when I’m reading a book and I see the word. I stop and take note and never forget it again.</p>
<p>Carolyn’s Corner in the Spelling Bee website has lots of info. It’s really too much just for the SAT/ACT but you can find a lot of uselful things and once it starts it’s something new every week, however, nothing beats being an avid reader since an early age.</p>
<p>i wrote down the words in a book and brought it along almost everywhere i went. during spare time like breaks you should just flip through the list. but my list was quite short as out of the 400 words in the list i used i had picked out only around 30-50 as i knew all the rest already. </p>
<p>it’s important to link the words to words you already know. plus you HAVE</p>
<p>i didnt, i learned them.</p>
<p>I didn’t memorize, I just read a ton.</p>
<p>Instead of memorizing words though, the best thing is start memorizing Latin roots. Just by reading a lot, I started making connections about the words and then only later realized that the reason I somehow knew the meaning of a word even though I’d never seen it before was because of the root. And then when I started taking Spanish, I started recognizing even more roots. For example, a word that starts with salt- most likely involves jumping or leaping, from the Spanish verb “saltar”. Although, most roots in English which to me seem to come from Spanish most likely come from French, as the English language is composed mostly of French and Latin words. That’s the beauty of the Romance languages though, I suppose :)</p>
<p>Barring that, you can play FreeRice.com. It’s fun :)</p>
<p>like a lot of the other posters here, i read a lot when i was younger, thought im too lazy to do so now. i was kinda stuck-up as a kid and read those thick books w/ big words in them, and somehow i just picked the words up, and started seeing them everywhere. plus i have this thing with interesting-sounding words.
i tried the collegeboard word list, and only got the first few words through, and then i got bored. in my defense though, i still remember “ablutions”…though it never appeared in any of my sats.
but remembering you root words do help (reading harry potter also helps you cheat a bit sometimes as their “spells and potions” have latin bases, and tend to reflect the meaning of the root word. i sound like a huge dork right now, but its like veritaserum:truth potion::veritable:real) . i dont remember what I did on my sats b/c i knew the words, but when i played freerice i had to guess sometimes based on root words, and the vast majority of the time it worked.
i guess for me doing well on the reading section of the sats (i got an 800) was a mix of reading a lot and being able to remember words.
but if flashcards really do work for you and you have a good enough memory to remember that gargantuan list, then more power to you</p>
<p>Adult here – I did NOT read a lot, ever really, as a kid. I was always playing sports at every free hour, then homework.</p>
<p>I did nothing especially to prepare for the SAT and got a crummy 670 CR. I see things have changed!</p>
<p>My daughter does not read much either, but instead of my tennis/football/wrestling/baseball, etc., she has dance many hours per week.</p>
<p>I am going to suggest the Sparcnotes idea to her.</p>
<p>Just a note about language and vocabulary in general – ironically, I ended up getting my degree in linguistics. Learning words in context is OK, but we end up actually guessing most of the time about the precise meanings of words. Each of us has a vocabulary comprised of words we know precisely, and perhaps over 1000 words we generally know the meaning of. </p>
<p>I think learning words by inference, in context, from reading is good, but in order to really learn a word, you must look up the definition, know a synonym, and see it in a sentence. Even better to know the origin of the word, but that’s for the truly nerdy.</p>
<p>I never studied…I just took it.</p>
<p>Kaplan vocab cards. I thought they were useless but I forced myself to memorize. 3 of them were on the SATs, I wouldn’t have gotten the questions right otherwise. Not like it helped me as much as I wanted but I highly recommend.</p>
<p>Wow, I didn’t realize people did this, other than say if English is their second (or third or fourth) language. I got a SAT-V score in the mid 700’s with no studying, and my son’s was a 780, I think. We’re a family of readers and writers, and those words are just things we know. People sometimes comment on it. For example, when my son was in kindergarten, his teacher said that in 35 years of teaching, he was the only elementary student she’d had who knew and used the word “ironic”. My daughter was showing her portfolio last year to someone from Otis (she was a sophomore) and refered to something as being “po-mo” and the reviewer said, “Do you even know what that MEANS, at your age? Is this the sort of language they use in your house?” and she was like, “Uhhhh, yes…” I realize those are simpler than the vocabulary you’re thinking of, and we don’t sit around using big words all the time, but the varied vocabulary my family has is something others notice, so it must be unusual. </p>
<p>Additionally, as others have mentioned, I think my son teaching himself Latin also helped his SAT’s.</p>