Vocabulary on the Digital SAT is not about memorising hard words

What is actually tested

Words in Context is one of the largest question types in Reading and Writing. The words tested are almost never exotic. They are mid-frequency academic words with several shades of meaning, used in a sentence where only one shade fits.

Think of words like undermine, qualify, sustain, arbitrary, novel, yield, warrant. You know all of them. The question is whether you know the second and third meanings.

The method that works

• Cover the choices. Read the sentence and put your own plain word in the blank.
• Check each choice against your plain word, not against the sentence. This stops the passage from talking you into a bad fit.
• Watch the connector words. However, therefore, although and yet tell you whether the blank continues or reverses the previous idea.
• Plug your final choice back in and read the whole sentence. If it sounds like something no one would write, it is wrong.

Study roots, not lists

A list of 3,000 words is unlearnable in twelve weeks. Roughly sixty roots, prefixes and suffixes cover a very large share of the academic vocabulary this test likes. Learn bene, mal, cred, dict, ject, spec, tract, ten, vert, and their friends, and you can make an educated guess at a word you have never met.

Spaced repetition beats cramming by a wide margin here. Ten minutes a day for eight weeks will out-perform four hours the weekend before, and the difference is not close.

Second meanings to check today

• Qualify — to limit or soften a claim, not only to be eligible.
• Novel — new, not only a book.
• Yield — to produce, as well as to give way.
• Sustain — to support or endure over time, as well as to suffer an injury.
• Arbitrary — based on preference rather than reason, not simply random.
• Undermine — to weaken gradually from underneath.