The SAT and the 220,000 words in the English Language

SAT Vocabulary Learning

When I was teaching high school, I met a lot of parents who asked me what they should do to prepare their children to take the SAT. Most of the questions came at the end of junior year just a few months before the children had to take this daunting test. Although preparing over the summer months can only help, real preparation for the SAT begins much earlier. But this is a point many parents and kids don’t seem to get.

There is a lot of debate about how many words there are in the English language, but everyone agrees that there are a lot! Most scholars agree that there are more than 220,000 words in our language…much more than can be mastered in a single summer of SAT practice. The truth, however, is that most people, even the very well educated, do not know and use every word in our language. The developers of the SAT, the College Board, do not expect teens to know every word, just a decent percentage of them.

I reviewed the SAT College Board website and found a description of the SAT verbal / language portion of the exam. Although there is no longer an analogy section, vocabulary knowledge is key to success on the language portion the test which offers a potential 1600 points.

The SAT now looks like this:

Reading and Sentence Completion – possible 800 points.

‘Reading’ tests comprehension of what is stated in or implied by the passage.

‘Sentence completion’ tests vocabulary and understanding of sentence structure.

Writing – possible 800 points.

‘Improving sentences’ tests the ability to correct faults in usage and sentence structure, recognize effective sentences that follow the conventions of Standard Written English.

‘Identifying sentence errors’ tests the ability to recognize faults in usage, and recognize effective sentences.

‘Improving Paragraphs’ tests the ability to revise sentences in the context of a paragraph or the entire essay, organize and develop paragraphs in a coherent and logical manner.

‘The Essay’- 25 minutes to present and support a point of view on a specific issue.

Students have to know vocabulary, the conventions of Standard Written English (not journalistic-style writing), and be practiced in the reading of highly complex and sometimes scientific text in order to do well on this test. This is too much to try to learn in one summer.

As a teacher, I believe the best way for students to develop vocabulary skills is to read and look up unknown words when they come across them. This is easier now than when I was young because kids now have iphones and ipads and computers… many have never even seen an old-fashioned dictionary. Another easy way for students to develop their vocabulary skills is to use their thesaurus when they are using their computers. This habit trains students to relate words with similar meanings which develops vocabulary. There are other available resources available such as word a day calendars and non-intimidating vocabulary books for middle school students. SAT prep texts are also available but some students are intimidated by the size of these books. In truth, half the battle is getting the kids to prepare, and intimidating texts do not help. Smaller books or lists of 10 or 20 words are much more effective for students who don’t love reading and studying. And all these SAT preparations should begin during or before freshman year.

For fun, test yourself; do you know what these SAT words mean?

redolent

bedaub

cabal

phlegmatic

bellicose

abrogate

sybarite

redress

surreptitiously

contumacious

More hubs to come on SAT prep. Good luck to your kids!