The Dilemma of Vocabulary
Aside from fear of math, the hardest shortcoming to overcome when preparing for a standardized test is a weak vocabulary. If you’re an adult, it’s good to examine your present vocabulary and consider how much of it you knew when you were 17. In my case, most of the polysyllabic words with which I’m now familiar I hadn’t used even once at that age. Let’s face it, learning vocabulary is a sedimentary process. Words wash in, and if we use them regularly they bond with the words we already know. When they’re not used, they wash away again.
Most of the books and articles about the SAT that I’ve seen prescribe either learning long lists of vocabulary words (you can imagine how often that suggestion falls on fertile ground) or reading more. Yes, reading more will work, but in order for that reading to build vocabulary, the student must be willing to keep a dictionary handy and look up every word with which he or she is not familiar. It’s not enough to think you know the meaning or to always rely on the context. A example of how context can mislead: Recently, one of my students, while discussing a passage in which the term “maverick astronomers” was used, told me that, as far as he knew, “maverick” meant “angry old guy.” I asked him how he came to that conclusion, and he said that otherwise why would John McCain refer constantly to himself as a “maverick”? Good question.
Nor will prefixes and suffixes help on the SAT. The people who write the test weren’t born yesterday, and they know that if they really want to test a person’s vocabulary, they can’t give blatant hints. So, one of the SAT’s favorite vocabulary words, “extol,” which means “to praise highly,” is one that is almost never “figured out” by a test taker. My students inform me that they only reason they know that “sublime” has a positive meaning is that there is a band by that name.
Our Sentence Completion practice packets for 2009-10 include glossaries that feature short definitions of every difficult word used in the packet. Students who rarely open a dictionary can easily turn to another page within the exercise to pick up the definition of a difficult word.
If you would prefer to play with vocabulary in order to learn it, try our vocabulary quizzes on the Quizlet web site (links below). We have gathered around 400 words that we have seen used repeatedly on the SAT and loaded those words with their meanings onto the site. Click a link and try a few words; doing so will only take a few minutes, and it might be very helpful to your Reading SAT score.
List of Terms from A to C
http://quizlet.com/set/326333/
List of Terms from D to F
http://quizlet.com/set/326903/
If you’d like the rest of our Quizlet SAT set, drop us a line at vocabulary@maineprep.com and we’ll send it along.