How can I greatly improve my vocabulary for the SAT?

READING is the absolute best way to improve your vocabulary (and grammar, for that matter). You can read anything, really, as long as you’re reading SOMETHING, but it’s better if you read more challenging books, the type you would read for school. I suggest 1984, The Scarlet Letter, Crime and Punishment, maybe, and other things like that.

There are books you can get specifically for SAT vocabulary. But more importantly:

EVERY TIME you hear or read a word you don’t know, LOOK IT UP! Better yet, look it up, discover the etymology (origin) of the word, and try to discover words that are related to it through the Latin (or whatever) roots. Look at Greek and Latin prefixes and suffixes and their meanings (Wikipedia can be helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefix_%28linguistics%29 ) and basic Latin roots in general. The makers of the SAT seem to really like words with direct Latin roots.

That way, you can figure out words you don’t know.

For example, words with “mit” or “mis” like commit, submit, commission, omission, transmit, etc. all come from Latin compound words with “mittere” which is “to send”. So, if you see a word you don’t know, say, “concomitant”, you may not know what it means, but you may know that “mit” implies “to send,” and the “con-” and “co-” both (in this case) imply “together”, so the word has something to do with sending things together! (“Concomitant” actually means “accompanying,” and in, something that goes along with something else… so the Latin roots may not get you an exact definition, but they’ll get you close and help you rule out the wrong words as well.) Learning some basic Latin roots (portare, facere, mittere, laborare, tenere…) can do you as much good as memorizing hundreds of words, sometimes. Lol, I had 4 years of Latin in high school, and have empirical proof that my vocabulary is more extensive than that of 99% of the American population (on an official test given nationwide to all age ranges [“concomitant” was on that test, btw, and I had never heard it before, but I got it right!]), and an 800 on the critical reading section of the SAT! Just keep reading, try some vocabulary-builder books, and learn some Latin!

Good luck!

Hm, theres a lot of work to be done. i got 1600 on PSAT and , when measured in SAT standard, it was 1050. First: consider Princeton review course, or any other sat preparatory tuition-it will raise your score by at least 300 points, even if you slack on some of the homework. plus, it will show you which direction to move in. once you get to 2000, its really hard to break it on your own, so get a private tutor then. practice makes perfect-it applies here: the more problems you do :the right way (how the preparatory course wants you to do), the faster and easier it will be. also:there are 250 words, a hit parade list of the vocab most frequently mentioned in the test (prinseton review book) plus there is a list of around 500 other :useful: words online-just type in google – sat hit parade. if you put enough time and will into it, you will get a 2200 or so (if you really want it) good luck

Instead of sitting there and trying to memorize words out of a vocab book, read some classics. It’ll help you in more ways than one. Going through word roots is a pain, although helpful. If you don’t have time to do that, don’t sweat it. SAT uses pretty much the same group of words all the time and most of the time, you can solve loads of things with context clues. You don’t need to memorize every single word out there. Plus, you’ll have school and if you’re going thru AP Lang or US History, you’ll learn some words from there too. It’s a pretty natural process I think.

maybe i know more words then u, but i didnt see anything hard about the english vocab in the SAT(i got 1820 on it).Unless ur REALLY bad with words, you dont need to just sit down and memorize words, that doesnt help. i would say to just read alot of books. and they even have special ones that highlight hard words and give u the definition on the bottom, but i doubt that really helps people remember words. dont focus TOO much on this, dont forget about the math part as well.

p.s. at school we have vocab units which helps alittle bit. if ur school does that, try hard on the vocab quizzes cuz they often use words that are important to know.

There are only a certain amount of words covered on the SAT exam. I suggest buying the Princeton Review’s book since they have the “Princeton HOT 100” list of words that are covered on the SAT. These are the words that show up most often. In addition, I highly recommend buying TutorFox.com’s sat guide. The book costs 10 dollars and covers everything you need to do well on the exam.

I hope you don’t take umbrage to this, but you really need to find and emulate great speakers and writers. I worked with a retired Marine Colonel who had an outstanding command of the language arts. Every time he spoke or wrote a letter, I studied it and read the definitions of the many utterances he had. As I gradually learned how to use these emphatic and oft misunderstood words, I soon excelled in the exciting craft of linguistics. The key is to read, listen carefully and understand.

“We should listen as well as we hear.”

Oh, and Morgan, it’s courses and not coarses. Also quizzes, not quizes.

Kaplan offers some free coarses and I’m fairly certain that if you search online you’d find some websites that offer quizes for SAT vocabulary. Let me also say that the PSATs are way WAY easier then the SATs (in my opinion).

That is very simple. Instead of watching TV, try reading a book a week. You will find a very quick improvement

Read books that are very above your age level and use those as an aid to improve your vocabulary.

use five word a week and study them find out the grammar and the origin use it in a sentence everyday in a daily conversation then get someone to make a test for you every two weeks to test your ability