Vocabulary

[anon67749591]

^ Humm, I am not certain about the part of my posts that cause such confusion. Perhaps, I did miss a negation in a quick reply. Rest assured that I do not recommend to read the entire dictionary. I might have written something like “After all, if word lists worked, one could read the entire dictionary!” but that was dismissive.

To be clear, my suggestion is to prepare the verbal sections by working the actual tests and always work with the direct context in mind. Recognizing patterns comes with time spent “playing” with the test. While it is better to try answering the questions, if one is short on time, it is beneficial to read past tests and look up words that are unknown during the reading sessions. One can do 2-3 sections in 20-30 minutes before bed time!

@xiggi It is not confusing. I rather feel it is inscrutable. What do you exactly mean by patterns and direct context? For example, let’s say one is working through the ten Blue Book tests. What would you tell him/her to do? And if there are patterns, why can’t they be universal where one may tell them to everyone and…boom, everyone now knows the specific patterns? Or are they individual patterns that differ from one person to another? After all, what could those patterns be (context, type of sentence, transitions, compare/contrast) and could they even help when there are words one doesn’t know what they mean nor he/she has any way to know what they mean? Those are just some questions that I can’t figure out answers for while highlighting/strikethroughing keywords and answers in 3 online SAT tests I proactively went through with your method.

Here is the dictionary post which you hinted at with looking up the unknown words (post 56):
[Critical Reading](Critical Reading - #46 by xiggi - SAT Preparation - College Confidential Forums)

I wish you can show us an example of how you would do a SAT CR question.