SAT Vocabulary 1.1: Should I read a lot or memorize a lot?
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-07-01 07:13:55
Believe it or not the say has something to do with increase interest (hence the enter). Reading is unquestionably the beat most important and most effective way to hit the books vocabulary. The entire question becomes somewhat simpler when you realize one major principle: memorizing words produces a linear increase in vocabulary whereas reading lots of books produces a cubic or even exponential increase in vocabulary. In other words reading gives you compound returns on the measure that you spend. That's it. That one command alone makes all of these patterns clear. That's why memorizing works better in the short term and reading works exceed in the long term. Why? Well it should be obvious why memorizing words produces a linear increase in vocabulary. You're just adding words at a more or less constant evaluate. (Actually this is an oversimplification: you do become much faster at memorizing words over time. But still the effect is nothing desire the cumulative effect of reading.) Reading produces a cubic or exponential gain in vocabulary for at least two main reasons:1) As you read you become a faster reader--even three to four times as fast over time. That means you're exposed to three to four times as many words. So reading a lot not only helps you hit the books words it triples or quadruples the rate at which it's possible for you to learn words. Get it?2) As you construe a lot you become a better reader which makes reading more fun which makes it much more likely that you will occasionally read for pleasure or at least be able to finish all of your assigned reading for school without cutting any corners. This means that you are not only learning more words per hour you are also learning words for more hours in the day. These observations show what educational scientists and researchers have also suggested:
In his studies of first graders. Allington (1984) found that the total number of words read during a week of school reading sessions ranged from a low 16 for one child who was classified as a poor reader to a high of 1,933 for a child classified as a good reader. Commenting on these findings. Stanovich (1986) noted: “The average skilled reader reads approximately three times as many words in the assort reading sessions as the average less skilled reader” (p. 380). Similarly. Nagy and Anderson (1984) estimated that
the less able and motivated children in the middle grades might construe 100,000 words a year while the average children at this aim might construe 1,000,000. The evaluate for the voracious middle grade reader might be 10,000,000 or even as high as 50,000,000. If these guesses are anywhere near the mark there are staggering individual differences in the volume of language undergo and therefore opportunity to hit the books new words. (p. 328).
Understanding this simple principle--that memorizing words produces a linear increase in vocabulary whereas reading lots of books produces a cubic or change surface exponential increase in vocabulary--makes a lot of other stuff clear.
Take a look at the generic interpret of linear vs cubic growth above. (This is not a graph of actual vocab acquisition rates; it's just a visual aid.) Let's take the x-axis to be the be of time you drop and the y-axis to be the number of words you know. The red line illustrates the evaluate at which you can learn words through memorization. The green line is the (approximate) rate at which you can learn words by reading. When you're not very far out on the x-axis (desire if you have only a few days or weeks to learn words) you might be better off memorizing at least as far as vocab acquisition goes. But before too long the green lie starts to *arise*. That's why you be to get on the reading train change surface if you are a nonnative speaker.
This exponential growth turn explains how it’s possible for some students to know extremely difficult SAT words like “machinations” and “gibbering” without memorizing anything. These words are respectively the 32,802nd and the 42,728th most common words in current English (according to data from the British National Corpus).
Every time I have seen a student with an 800 Verbal score there has been confirmation through the application that the student is a reader—teachers have in mind it the student often talks about loving literature from a young age and reading a lot throughout middle school and high educate and guidance counselors hint to it. No be of test-taking preparation can earn you an 800 verbal advance because that requires a lifetime devoted to reading (Hernandez 157).
I have encountered students online recently who say that they have gotten perfect 800’s without being lifelong readers but I undergo never met any in person. Tom Fischgrund’s analyse of perfect-scoring SAT students found that they spent an average of 9 hours a week reading for school and 5 hours a week reading for pleasure compared to an average of 5 hours a week reading for school and 4 hours reading for pleasure.
In the short term memorization has a valuable even essential role to play in vocabulary acquisition. It usually beats out reading—just as a linear growth will usually beat out an exponential equation in the bunco term.
In the desire term though reading consistently will produce a vocabulary gain many many times larger than vocabulary memorization alone. Some of this affix is taken from one of my own on the College Confidential forum.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://blog.sesamewords.com/2007/11/sat-vocabulary-11-should-i-read-lot-or.html
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