Test Prep: Add Vocab to the Summer Routine

Summer vacation is quickly approaching, and this three-month expanse of time means different things to different students. Perhaps it's an opportunity to travel cross-country with family. Perhaps it's the perfect chance to snag that lifeguard job or that gig at the coffee shop, in order to put away some money for the following year.

Students might also want to capitalize on the studying opportunities that long summer days bring. This is particularly true for high-school students who will be taking high-stakes standardized tests in the following year. If your child will be taking the PSAT, SAT, or ACT in the coming academic year, you may want to encourage her to fit some vocab-studying sessions into her summer plans.

True: Even the most academically ambitious kids might balk at studying during their summer break. But with so much riding on these tests—including college admissions and the opportunity to become a National Merit Finalist, which translates to big scholarship dollars—it's worth investing a little time. Vocabulary study can be broken down into small chunks, so that it fits into your child's schedule.

Why the emphasis on vocabulary study? Well, when your child takes the PSAT, SAT, or ACT, he will be seeing dozens of these high-level words. If he has a strategy for tackling vocabulary-related questions, he will feel infinitely more confident in his answers. Now, let's take a look at a few vocabulary strategies that can help your child in his vocabulary study—and help him excel on vocabulary-related test questions.

Vocab Tip #1: Predict the Future. Encourage your child to make predictions about difficult words. This can be done while practicing sentence-completion items, or while reading the comprehension passages. Before moving on to the answer choices, a students should pause and consider what she thinks the word means. Is it a negative word? A positive word? Are there context clues (i.e., words or phrases surrounding the tricky word) that can help? Thinking about meaning before looking at the answer choices will help greatly with Tip #2.

Vocab Tip #2: Toss the Wrong Answers. When answering a vocab question, a test-taker should never just choose the first answer that "looks right." Instead, she should read through all of the answer choices first. Then, she should eliminate the answer choices that are obviously wrong. How is this done? Well, if she knows, for example, that she is definitely looking for a "positive" word, she can eliminate any "negative" words (toughies like malediction or ostracize) in the answer choices. Eliminating wrong answer choices greatly improves the chance of finding the right answer choice. And, in the numbers game that is high-stakes testing, this sort of method can prove very valuable.

Vocab Tip #3: Root Around. See that word up there in Tip #2: malediction? At first glance, it looks like a typical SAT word: multisyllabic, infrequently used, downright tough. But if your child understands word roots, the meaning of malediction will make itself clear far more easily. (Mal means "bad" or "evil." Diction means "to speak." A malediction is the speaking of evil.) Most good test-prep books contain lists of common root words, and understanding these can be far more beneficial than just memorizing every big word on an SAT or ACT vocab list. Additionally, students who study Greek, Latin, or any of the modern Romance languages (e.g. Spanish, French, Italian) are likely to have a working familiarity with these roots.

When the year's final school bell rings, vocab-prep probably won't be the first thing on your child's mind. But with a little diligence, he can take huge steps toward becoming a more proficient test-taker—and that will really pay off when the first school bell rings in the fall.

Does your child need to brush up on vocabulary skills as part of summer SAT Prep? Find the best solution for your family here.