I watched last nights National Spelling Bee from Washington, DC with awe. A parade of kids mostly 12 years old were spelling words that most people will never be exposed to in their lifetime. None of these really hard words is ever likely to show up on the SAT as choices for the sentence completions. However, these spellers were trained to ask certain questions before attempting to spell these words. Often the first question asked was, "Can I have the country of origin please?"
Which brings me to the point that I emphasize time and time again--You know more words than you think! If you are fluent in another language you should notice many difficult words have similar root words. For example ami and amigo mean "friend" in French and Spanish respectively. So, it should come as no surprise that amiable is an English word that means friendly.
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