Vocabulary Distress
Vocabulary can be the most frustrating part of the SAT. We all remember the feeling of not knowing any of the answer choices in SAT sentence completion. Sadly this humiliation does not end with the SAT; some of us continue to struggle as we read material with difficult words. One must not be pusillanimous when it comes to approaching vocab words; in fact one should reach the prodigious ability to engage in lexicon snobbery on a daily basis. The best way to attain this level of skill is to peruse resources such as the Excel… Continue Reading
Study help ‘at hand’
Here’s something to do with your smartphone that will make you smarter. There are a number of apps that make excellent study aids. I’ve downloaded and tested several and found a few that are great for memorizing vocabulary and more. For iPhone or iPod Touch users, Flashcard Touch is a study game-changer. This simple application allows you to create your own flashcards or, even better, download sets of flashcards from Quizlet, the online flashcard-sharing community. Imagine being able to carry Excel’s list of SAT vocabulary words everywhere you go! Now you can.* It costs $4.99… Continue Reading
Breaking Down Vocabulary
So you’ve been studying your vocabulary list for the last few weeks, and you’ve gotten the hang of it. You know definitions and you feel pretty comfortable about understanding the words in context, but what about the other hundreds of thousands of words in the English language? One thing that you can do to prepare yourself when you encounter the more remote words is learn to dissect words and figure out their meanings based on the roots. By dividing words into familiar parts, you can learn how to decode even the strangest vocabulary words. You… Continue Reading