1 THE COLLEGE HILL METHOD FOR SAT WORD POWER
80 MCGRAW-HILL’S SAT
if you want to learn the word magnanimity, you
should notice that it has three parts: magna(great) +
anima(spirit or life) + -ity(suffix indicating a quality).
It means generosity, and you should see why from its
roots.Use the Patternsof Words in Sentences
When you run across a new word in a sentence, make
a guess about its meaning based on how it’s used. Con-
sider this sentence: Even her favorite toy could not pla-
cate the screaming child. Even if you have never seen
the word placatebefore, you should be able to tell from
the sentence that it is a verb. Even more, you can tell
that it’s something a favorite toy might do to a scream-
ing child (even though it wasn’t successful in this
case). Since screaming children need to be calmed
down, and since toys often can do that, it’s a good bet
thatplacatemeans something like “calm down.”SimplifyYour Task by Connecting
Words in Groups
Memorizing is always easier when you can group the
information into chunks. Most words are related to
other words with the same basic meaning (syn-
onyms), the opposite meaning (antonyms), or the
same root (cognates). The lessons in this chapter help
you to group words in many ways: into theme groups
(such as “words about talking”), synonym groups,
antonym groups,andcognate groups.ConnectNew Words to Your Own
Experience or Knowledge
To learn a new word, you must connect it to some-
thing you understand. Word meanings aren’t isolated
facts to memorize. Think about how to useyour new
words. For instance, when learning the word enervate
(to weaken or decrease in strength or vitality), think
about what enervatesyou (a 4-hour standardized test,
perhaps?) or about examples of enervationin books
you’ve read (such as the enervationof Moby Dick as
Captain Ahab hunts him down). Visualize them and
say them out loud: “The SAT can be an enervating
experience,” and “Moby Dick was enervatedby the
incessant chase and his many harpoon wounds.”ConsiderAlternativeStrategies Such as the
ALIVE Visual Mnemonic System
Some words are hard to memorize because they have
obscure meanings or are hard to connect to other
words. For such words, College Hill Coaching’s
ALIVE visual mnemonic system is a great tool. Here’s
how it works:A strong vocabulary is essential to achieving a top
SAT critical reading score. But building a solid vocab-
ulary doesn’t mean just memorizing thousands of
flashcards. In fact, the way most students use flash-
cards is not only dull, but utterly ineffective. Believe
it or not, you’ve been using a much better system for
years. If you’re a normal 16-year-old, you have about
a 40,000-word vocabulary. Did you memorize all those
words with flashcards? No. You didn’t “study” them
at all. You just absorbed them by trying to understand
and communicate with the people around you.
When you take words out of the context of real
communication, your brain’s “vocabulary machine”
doesn’t work very well. So don’t just study flashcards
to memorize word meanings in isolation. Instead, fol-
low these rules while using the College Hill flashcard
system (which is discussed below) to study the words
in the lessons in this chapter.
Surround Yourself with Good Language
When you were a baby, you were surrounded by peo-
ple with much stronger vocabularies than yours, so
your vocabulary grew very quickly. As you got older,
however, your vocabulary grew to match that of the
people you hung out with, so its growth slowed. How
do you rev it up again? Talk to smart adults. Hang
around friends with good vocabularies. Read college-
level books. Watch documentaries on television rather
than mindless game shows, soap operas, and reality
shows. Listen to National Public Radio. Read The New
York TimesOp-Ed page and Sunday Magazine. Read
articles and stories from Harper’s,Atlantic Monthly,
New Yorker,The Nation, and Scientific American.
Use Your New Vocabulary with
Friends and Family
To build your vocabulary, you have to try out your
new words. If you feel self-conscious about trying out
new words (and most teens do), find a close friend or
relative to practice vocabulary with—maybe a friend
who’s also prepping for the SAT. On the next couple
of pages we’ll give you lots of good strategies for
building vocabulary with a friend.
AnalyzeWords as You Read and Speak
As you run across new words, think about their roots,
their synonyms, and their antonyms. The 49 lessons
in this chapter include 200 of the key roots, prefixes,
and suffixes, as well as lists of synonyms and antonyms
for each word. Reinforce your new words by breaking
them into their roots, prefixes, and suffixes and connect-
ing them to other words that share them. For instance,