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Question

Dear Mitch,

The other day you responded to a question about the SAT's Verbal Section from a person whose daughter was an 'ESL' student (English as Second Language), and I thought you made a good point about the shortcoming of most of the SAT review books: instead of taking into account the fact that there are more and more high school students in this country who are either 'ESL' kids and/or kids who come from homes lacking the use of rich language that the people in charge of the SAT test seem to take for granted:  the shortcoming you refer to, which really is a disappointing feature of most of the books, is that, with this assumption, they simply skip a huge category of words that ARE on the test, because they are everywhere, and these missing words are as necessary to comprehending the reading passages as are the official 'vocab' words that are included in the review books as mandatory nuggets of knowledge to be absorbed).   As you mention,  words that are 'easy' and so "common" that they seem not to warrant even a page of space in prep-books get prematurely excluded from the pack that students should be provided plenty of opportunity to absorb; the SAT prep books typically jump into the pile of more sophisticated words that the authors believe students need to learn... 

BUT, many of these 'easy' words will appear on the test, and they will appear at least as much as the 'fancy' words, AND, the 'easy' ones are as necessary to success on the test as are any of the others, but without a chance to practice working with them and reviewing them, the test can feel like an almost insurmountable challenge. 

Any suggestions?

Sincerely, 

Mrs. McDr --

Answer

Dear Mrs. McDr --, 

Yes, I do have a suggestion! 

How about a second round of last week's surprise 'hit', the Adler-n-subtract 'group of groups', or 'word families' (minus ones that will not yield a  high return for your study-time).  Always remember that in studying, as in all areas of life, you have to make decisions to manage your time and energy intelligently.  Basically, the formula is this: you go to wherever you get the most 'bang for your buck', i.e., the  words you believe are most likely to be on the test and be there in places that will help you... for each moment you study it.. 

For this category (easy words that kids don't know), we find ourselves with a collection that is as close to infinite in size as any category can get.  So, rather than going for 'completeness' here and setting myself up to 'fail' I am going for incompleteness with the hope that next time I will know more.
 

The 'Happy Family':

 

HAPPY:

Jovial

Elated

Joyous

Tickled

Overjoyed

Thrilled

'in seventh heaven'

'on cloud nine'

Pleased

Jubilant

Joyful

High-spirited

'in a state of Nirvana'

Floating

'in heaven'

'complete'

Up

Positive
 

 

The Sad Ones:
 

UNHAPPY:

Melancholy

Sad

Miserable

Gloomy

Blue

Gray/grey

Down

Dismal

Hopeless

Wistful

'in state of mourning'

Depressed

Negative

Forlorn

 

The Hate Words: 

HATE:

loathe

abhor

despise

dislike

resent

 

The Words of 'Greener Grass':

compare-words/words-used-in-comparison:

 

kinship with

contrast

analogous

homologous

parallel to

comparable

inferior to

superior to

equal

equivalent

related to

relevant to

better

worse

unrelated

similar to

different from

indistinguishable from

delineated

mirroring

opposite to

identical

commonality

uncommon

matching

complementing

dependant

independent

unconnected

unlike

dissimilar

distinguishable

attached

alternative

substitutable

identical

paired

variation

relationship

 

 

Hope this helps, 

Good Luck,

Mitch