<p>I have the big blue book, but I need work w/vocab + CR. Do these Kaplan level 1 + 2 vocab books guarantee those words will be on the SAT? I don’t want to waste time memorizing 1000 words and have none of them show up…? Also, what other techniques/tips do you guys have?</p>
<p>Inevitably if you want to get a perfect Sentence Completion section on CR, you’re gonna have to memorize the “1000” words. Yes, a large majority of them will not show up, however for the few that do you want to be ready. Personally I used Word Smart I and II from Princeton Review, which is around 3000 words total, or something along those lines. Also, I crammed. I don’t advise it but if you read alot, you shouldn’t actually be memorizing too many new words. I went through those too books 3 days before the test.</p>
<p>Otherwise, go through say 10 words a day, and make sure you memorize them perfectly. Also review the ones you’ve memorized before so you don’t forget words. This way you’ll retain (hopefully) the words you’ve memorized after the SAT. Personally I probably couldn’t recall most of the words I had to memorize the day after the test.</p>
<p>My advice: take a few practice CR sections and see how comfortable you feel with the words before you commit to cramming vocab on a daily basis. </p>
<p>I’m not going to recommend memorizing 1000 words because, truth be told, I scored an 800 without ever cracking open one of those lists. I read a lot, but what really helped me was not the random words I picked up from books but the ability to reason out what a word approximately meant based on context and word stems and prefixes and such. </p>
<p>The books can never guarantee that all–or even most–of the words on the SAT will have been highlighted in their vocab lists by the simple fact that they are not the people who write the test. If you depend entirely on memorization, what will you do when an unfamiliar word shows up? If you’re fairly solid at vocab to start with, I say focus on what you do know and how you can break up words to figure out how other words work. Simple things like knowing which prefixes tend to denote positive or negative mood can help you out in a pinch. Even if you do take the memorization route, take some time to notice patterns in words.</p>