二手徵求有驚喜
為了考出好成績，務必要有充分的準備。這一章從詞彙、語法、閱讀技巧等方面給考生建議和忠告，為他們在備考過程中助一臂之力。
As the proverb says opportunities only favor those who are prepared, your success lies in your persistence and perseverance in getting yourself ready for challenges ahead. The SAT is not a test you can excel without effort. If, by any chance, you breeze through it, the chances are that other students can do it well too.
As the SAT is a norm-referenced test-Norm-referenced tests (NRTs) compare a person's score against the scores of a group of people who have already taken the same exam, your performance in the test is compared with those of the other test-takers, most of whom are native speakers of the English language in the United States. The critical reading part is difficult for American high school students, let alone for our Chinese students to whom English is a second or foreign language. To get 95 percentile in the SAT (2000 or higher out of 2400), you must do all you can to improve your reading skill and comprehension. You must read all the time to enlarge your vocabulary and consolidate your grammar knowledge.
A. Build Up Vocabulary Bank
The SAT critical reading section questions the student's understanding of the vocabulary, content and style of specific reading passages. This section is the most time demanding, with some passages taking up to 15 minutes. Vocabulary plays a key role in both sentence completion and passage comprehension, so it is necessary to boost your knowledge of SAT-level words.
a. Make use of contexts
One way to improve your vocabulary is reading. By reading a great deal, you will encounter new and valuable words. You will learn the meanings of many of these words in context by perceiving a clear connection between a new word and the words that surround it.
b. Find new words' relatives
Once you are a junior or senior, or even just a sophomore, you have already had a fairly large English vocabulary bank. Therefore, mostly probably many new words are not totally new to you. You will know their "relatives" either in meaning, spelling, pronunciation, formation, or usage.
E. figurative
•You may already know the words permanent and annual. They are perennial's relative in word formation and meaning. If you put these two words together, you can get perennial which means all-year-round, or continuing.
Continuing is a relative of perennial in meaning. Which of the five words means continuing or non-stopping? Obviously unceasing is the right choice.
In this way, you learn the word faster and retain it for a longer time.
c. Set up word webs
With unknown words, you may set up word webs, associating new words with other words new or familiar to you in spelling, meaning (similar or opposite) and usage. For instance, demography-census chide-castigate-chastise censure consent-consensus censor-censorious Censure is an SAT word. In meaning, you may associate it with chide, castigate, chastise; in meaning and spelling, censor and censorious can be easily connected with it. Censure, census, and consensus look quite similar and they can be confusing. Why don't you put them together to see how different they are and in what way? Once you know which means what, you can further expand the web to include demography, consent, etc. Learning a word in relation with other words is much easier than memorizing it in isolation. To put it in another way, setting word webs shortens the familiarization process.
d. Remember prefixes, suffixes and roots
With the exception of singular syllable words, many English words consist of a root, a suffix and/or a prefix. A root normally gives you the basic meaning of a word while a suffix may change its parts of speech and a prefix may change its meaning. For instance, the words cacophonous and prescription may look difficult for you, but if you divide them into three parts, you'll find them much easier to
understand and remember.
Though both impassionate and inflammable have the negative prefixes im-and in-, they are synonyms to passionate and flammable respectively. These are just two exceptions to the general rule of negative prefixes.
Remembering English prefixes, suffixes and roots may not solve all your vocabulary problems, it is, nonetheless, one of the useful ways to help you learn and memorize new words.
e. Cramming and rote-learning
While often considered classic and negative, cramming and rote-learning are becoming more and more common among students who would like to augment their vocabulary within a few months or only a few weeks. These ways have proved to be very effective, especially in memorizing new words.
By cramming, I suggest that you go over an SAT glossary, learn 20 to 30 words a day. Towards the end of a week, review all the words, including the sentences in which they appear. To make cramming more meaningful, you may write down all the new words you come across in a text, memorize the text. In this way not only do you get to know the new words, but also how they are used in the context.
Rote-learning sounds simplistic and childish, but if you read aloud new words several times, better still, if you use your index finger to write the word in the air or on the desk at the same time, you are making use of several of your senses (mouth, ears, eyes, finger) which enforce each other to help you learn new words through different channels.
Learning new words, especially when you try to learn many new words within a short period of time, is a constant battle against oblivion. It is said that it takes at least four or five times to encounter a new word before it stays in your memory. Given the fact that learning new words is a time-consuming process, it is better to start now and be persistent and consistent.
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