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