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does this actually help? has anyone gained a huge point increase on verbal just by memorizing for example barrons 3500 word list??

By Yz16 (Yz16) on Thursday, July 03, 2003 - 02:59 pm: Edit

well, the verbal is mainly a vocab test...so yea, i guess it would help.
i dunno about 'huge' though.
I heard someone suggest memorizing latin roots and then figuring it out from there.

Personally, the latin roots sounds like the best way to go but it doesn't work for me. I memorize whole words better and sometimes work from there when looking at an unfamiliar word. Someone gave the example of anachronistic. 'ana' 's a typical 'not' and 'chron' for me comes from 'chronometer' or 'chronology' or 'chronicles'. 'isic' - adj. ending.

Same thing i guess. Depending on how much time you have maybe you should read a lot. Best to see the words in context.

By Bigman82085 (Bigman82085) on Thursday, July 03, 2003 - 03:04 pm: Edit

I agree with yz; there is no need to memorize 3500 words.

By Serene (Serene) on Thursday, July 03, 2003 - 03:45 pm: Edit

It worked for me. 610 on Barron practice test. 800 on real.

By Physicsstud (Physicsstud) on Thursday, July 03, 2003 - 03:47 pm: Edit

How did you get a scaled score serene, since the test doesn't give one. What scale did you use?

By Jimjunior (Jimjunior) on Thursday, July 03, 2003 - 06:35 pm: Edit

the verbal is not mainly a vocab test. I run into a couple of words that I dont know, but I only 1 analogy wrong on the psat, and 1 wrong on the SAT. A lot of what you are looking for is just knowing the connotation of the word and part of speech.

By Serene (Serene) on Thursday, July 03, 2003 - 07:51 pm: Edit

Physicsstud: Really? It's the in Barron's Verbal workbook.

By Arora00 (Arora00) on Thursday, July 03, 2003 - 11:44 pm: Edit

3500 vocab words from Barrons Book is all u need for English. Well i dont have any experience with them, but im giving u a vacarious experience.

By Nemo (Nemo) on Thursday, July 03, 2003 - 11:55 pm: Edit

Wow...hopefully that was supposed to be vicarious...one of those good frequent words. When I look up words in the dictionary, I check the etymology and also look at some of the neighboring words. I have to make the most out of using the dictionary.

By Smac86 (Smac86) on Friday, July 04, 2003 - 08:53 am: Edit

Guys! Out of the 3500 words in Barrons, I knew more than 2000+ already, and I'm sure most of you posting here would know as many if not more words that constitute the 3500 words- its a mental block, the 3500 words are.... All you need to do is write down all the unfamiliar words from each list in a notebook and then cross them out as they start sticking.

Personally, the words didn't help me too much. What helped me was the practice I got from doing all ten SATs from 10 REAL SATs. The first time I took it, the Critical Reading section screwed me [though I'd done the words for the analogies and sentence completions pretty well], I ended up with a 660. The next time around, I practiced the tests and ended up with a great 740 [740 is great for me!!!!!]. Also, if you don't want to learn the words the conventional boring way, you should read Catch-22- all the really important words are found in this extremely funny and outrageous book! A must read for everyone, actually!