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Word Smart: Building an Educated Vocabulary (Princeton Review)

by: Adam Robinson David Owen
en

0679745890  9780679745891  

 

 

Word Smart: Word Smart (Princeton Review)
By Adam Robinson,&nbspDavid Owen, 

 


Book Description:

1) Do you know that to peruse a book is not to skim it?

2) Do you know the difference between enormous and enormity?

3) Do you know the adjective form of admonish, or the noun form of dubious?

If you answered no to any of these questions, you need Word Smart.

Improving your vocabulary is important, but where do you start? The English language has hundreds of thousands of words. To find out which words you absolutely need to know, The Princeton Review researched the vocabularies of educated adults. It analyzed newspapers from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal, magazines from Time to Scientific American and books from current bestsellers to classics. It threw out the words that most people know and focused on the words that people misunderstand or misuse. From these, it selected 823 words that appeared most frequently.

And for students, The Princeton Review did the same thing. It analyzed the PSAT, the SAT, and GRE to determine which words are tested more frequently. Word Smart is the only vocabulary book you'll ever need.

(Answers:
1) Despite what most people think, peruse means to read carefully.

2) Enormity can refer to the state of being large, but it also means a wicked or depraved act.

3) Admonitory, dubiety.)

 


Date: 2006-12-14   Rating: 5
Review:

Good For Building an Educated Vocabulary

I think there are two ways to inprove your vocabulary....or maybe three: 1) Read literature written with an "educated vocabulary" and either circle the new words or make a word list of the new words---books like those written by Charles Dickens "A Tale of Two Cities" or "David Copperfield" for example, or, 2) go through a dictionary from front to back 10 times for repetition---alittle hard for most of us to do, right?, or 3) Work through a work-book like this one that will teach you words selected by the author. I think this is a very good book for doing #3 above....use a word work-book. Two things are for sure, the ONLY way to learn new words and remember them is to put the words into your "long term memory". And, the only way for the average person to put words into their "long term memory" is through "REPETITION"---Going back again and again to your "word list" or to your circled words in the book to remind youself and test youself on the words and their meanings. This book will help identify the "new words" you need to learn and it will provide for "repetition" of those words so the words will go into your "long term memory". And....and....then you'll know some "edicated" words to use on your teachers so they'll think you're "smart"! :o) But, seriously, one way tests test for "smartness" is to give a vocabulary test. The theory is that "if a person knows alot of words they are smart". This may or may not be true but that's the way The SAT and other tests test for intelligence. Thus, this book is very worth your time and effort. Get a copy of the book, impress your teacher, and maybe you'll be admitted into a college someday so then you can become a teacher yourself who teaches these words to students. Or, you could become like Frank McCourt, a world famous author. One thing I am sure of though is that having an "educated vocabulary" WILL permit you to do things you would not be able to do without it. Any comments? boland7214@aol.c



Date: 2006-11-12   Rating: 1
Review:

Ridiculous -- little more than an...

...abridged dictionary with a couple of example sentences for each word...infinitely better books are available -- search for George Feinstein, D.J. Henry, Margaret Richek.



Date: 2006-08-30   Rating: 5
Review:

from a former SAT coach

I used to work as a professional SAT Reading coach, making big bucks; the key issue for most of my students was vocabulary. Rather, VOCABULARY. (The other is slowing down and thinking as--not after--they read.)

Many questions on the SAT reading section amount to vocabulary questions.

What this means is that if you want to improve your SAT scores, if you are an ambitious student trying to get into one of the top schools, there is no two ways about it: you have to study vocabulary.

And study vocabulary.

And study vocabulary.

You cannot study simply one book, or even one series of books. You have to study several series.

However, the Princeton Review Word Smart series is the best that I know of. You should start here. Even if you think you have a good vocabulary, start here just to be on the safe side, and you can move on later.

You would recommend studying any of the vocabulary books that I've ever seen--but I recommend mastering the Word Smart series. These really are by far the best--if you are shopping here, it probably means you need these books.

If you were one of my students, your parents paying lots of money, I would force you to master these books, and I would ride you like a horse until you did. And then your scores would come up, your parents would love me and tell all their friends, and I would get more jobs and more money. That's how it works.

Anyway, these are certainly the best vocabulary books on the market. Even if you're studying vocabulary for some other reason, these are probably still the best.

Good luck!



Date: 2006-08-26   Rating: 5
Review:

Fastest way to Build your Vocabulary!

Easy, fast, effective and fun way to improve your vocabulary. It will be a good investment!



Date: 2006-06-25   Rating: 3
Review:

Alphabetically sorted

The words have indeed been carefully selected. However, I believe there are more efficient ways to improve your vocabulary. Instead of organizing words by themes, they are listed alphabetically. This means that you have to select and rewrite them somewhere else. If you are as busy as I, select a book with themed "word-clusters".