Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Vocabulary

Students who experience the SAT for the first time have the same takeaway--the vocabulary was so hard! They lament, "If only I had a better vocabulary, I would have gotten a much better score." Here are my thoughts for improving your vocabulary:



1. Buy an electronic dictionary and look up any words you do not understand immediately. Read the sentence again and see if it makes sense now;

2. Circle any words you do not understand in the course of your reading. Buy the NY Times and read it this summer;

3. Realize that if you speak another language such as Spanish, French or Latin there may be a similar word in those languages that is close to the meaning in English;

4. When doing sentence completions on practice SAT tests, look up all the word choices you do not understand regardless of whether those words are the correct answers. Remember there is a specific group of words that the testmakers use, so todays incorrect answer may be tomorrow correct answer.

No comments: