Standardized English Test Vocabulary Building
The aim of this book is to help people preparing for a standardized test like the SAT or GRE to quickly build their vocabulary skills. The method used to do this is to tag words with stories to help aid remember the meanings.
Getting Started
[edit | edit source]If you are reading this book, then most probably, you will be taking an English test shortly. The basic idea about standardized English tests is that a substantial percentage of the score is dedicated to vocabulary. This could either be direct tests, for example questions based on synonyms and antonyms or indirect tests, for example questions that expect knowledge of the meaning of a word to derive a conclusion. Another important aspect on which this book relies, is that the number of words that are tested in standardized tests are not very large. Hence this book is not a dictionary of the English language. It only contains a small subset. The base list is derived from a set of words that the authors started working on. The list is expected to grow with contributions from viewers.
How to Contribute
[edit | edit source]There can be two types of contributors. Contributors by Chance and Contributors by Choice.
Contributors by Chance:
[edit | edit source]These are the low end contributors who we are not reading at contributing to the book in a planned fashion. If the user is looking for a specific word, but the word is not listed, he can add the word and its meaning out of the list. The story part can be left blank. If the user is browsing and has an idea for a story for a word, he can add the story to the corresponding row.
Contributors by Choice:
[edit | edit source]These are users who want to contribute to the book in a planned fashion. The user can pick a small number of words (say 5 words), that are either not there in the list already or that are there in the list but have the corresponding story column empty. The user then marks the corresponding story column for all the words in the selected list with an asterisk "*" and then starts working on a story for these words. Once the stories are ready, the user can replace the asterisk with the actual stories. The "*" protocol will help in reducing duplicate effort. To prevent the problem of a deadlock on words, the user must clear the "*" in case he is unable to think of a story for the word within 24 hours.