In this lesson video, we're going to talk about vocabulary. So, this is big. Everyone knows that vocabulary will show up on the SAT. A lot of people freeze up and say, I'm not even going to try to learn anything, there's simply too many words. Don't take that attitude, because you can definitely learn the keywords that are likely show up testing.

How do you do it? Well first off, meet the enemies. Oh, enemies are scary. Well, you may be very familiar with these enemies. Cramming, uh-huh, I told you, you're gonna be familiar with it. And that's okay, because most of your life, Mrs. Parkins has her little vocab quiz every Friday.

And like, two minutes before class, or even in class, you just cram the words, and then boom, you knock out As the entire year, and then you're like, yeah, I rock vocab. Well, guess what. This isn't Miss Parkin's little Friday morning vocab quiz. This is the SAT, and cramming is not gonna get you anywhere.

You're gonna, maybe, remember, like, three words, after trying to cram a hundred, and, no. So, don't cram. Lists. I'm probably gonna say, So, study your lists. But, no, alas, I am not, because lists are your enemy.

Have I totally flipped my top? No, there is a reason why. And that reason is, lists are boring for your brain, they are static, unchanging, and often alphabetical. So when you read lists, you're not really learning the word. You're just kind of reading the word that, or reading the definition that's next to a word.

And that's problematic cuz you're never really quizzing yourself, you're really never really keeping your brain awake. And what happens is, you stop memorizing a word in relationship to where it appears on the list. So if I tell you, oh, abstemious actually means full of moderation. You go, oh yeah, full of moderation, that was next to the other word which was, abysmal.

And next thing you know, you're just trying to memorize the position of lists, this happens all the time. You don't wanna do that, you wanna make sure you learn these words, that you embed them not in the short term cramming memory, but in the long-term memory. So, not quizzing yourself is another enemy. You want to quiz yourself far away from the list.

Don't just put your hand over, the definitions and then look at a word and try to define it again. Your, it's not going to work. So, finally, another enemy is not looking words up. If you're encountering words and you read, when you do critical reading passages, or even at school, or if you're reading a magazine, always look words up, make them part of your vocabulary.

You're more likely to remember them that way than if you're just reading them from a list. Again, lists are bad, guess what's not as bad? Flashcards, now we're gonna start with meeting your friends. Flashcards, randomized orders. You can do the easy front back thing, where you can look at a definition and then try to come up with the word.

And then of course, again, randomization means you could shuffle up the deck and so you're never, there's never an order to where the words appear, and that keeps your brain on it's little tippy, tippy toes. So flashcards are pretty good. Review too. Review obviously, this is kind of goes to the whole idea of quizzing yourself.

Review and quizzes. Because if you don't do this and you think oh, I just studied for 30 minutes now I know my words okay? And then you come back you're like, well, wait a second i don't remember as many words. That's because you didn't quiz yourself.

In fact 15 minutes after you're done studying take a blank piece of paper and see how many words you could write down from the words that you'd studied. Or if you wanna take a flash, your flashcards. 15, 20 minutes after studying, pick five flashcards at random and quiz yourself. How many do you get right? Vocabulary books are a great way as well for you to access these quizzes.

So, it's not as unstructured as you just quizzing yourself. Vocabulary books they have these quizzes in there, these crossword puzzles, these fun little things. Which ones come to mind? Barron's 1,100 words is good. SAT Lightning's also pretty good.

Just go to Amazon and you'll find them, there. Mnemonics, mnemonics is actually not the final one. And I'm gonna talk about it, in a moment. And that may be scary cuz you've never seen that word before. So that's a vocab word in of itself. But mnemonics are memory devices.

And before I talk about these mnemonics, I'm gonna meet a final friend, and it's more, kind of an attitude. Use it or lose it. So, you're learning these words. You're in your little study zone, and then, boom, you shut off and go about your day.

Boom, no, do not do that, why? Well, use these words throughout your day, they're kind of floating around in your head. And so you don't want to suppress them or put them down, but you want to actually use them. So if you're going out to eat and your friend goes, hey man, let's get the triple deck, decker bacon cheese sandwich.

You wanna say, hey wait a second, I should probably be a little more, abstemious where I restrain from overdoing it with food. Or maybe some person's walking down the road and they look really, really angry and you think, oh I just learned an SAT word that meant really, really angry, oh, belligerent. Maybe it was truculent.

And then all these associations start coming out, and that's great. And again you don't have to tell your friends, oh I'm being abstemious. I don't want the triple decker bacon cheese burger. No, you can just do this in your own head but it can be very helpful. And if this is your thing, write silly little stories, poems, songs lyrics, whatnot using SAT words.

Again, use it or lost it. If you never find yourself ever writing a story or poem and think that's horrible, then fine. Don't do it that way, but find some way to use these words throughout your day. It can be outsmarting your friends or making a game of it with your friends who are also taking the SAT.

Again you know who you are and if you know your friends are gonna banish you, kick you outta their group forever cuz you start quizzing them on SAT words that clearly don't do this. So outsmart your friends in a way where you're not being annoying. So that's the key. Find something where you can u, use vocab throughout the day.

I mentioned the scary word mnemonics. What do they mean again? Oops, you forgot, maybe? Well, again mnemonics are memory devices. Let me be a little bit more specific. They are creative ways of remembering words, so you get words in long-term memory.

And often times a great way to get something in long-term memory is by using your visual brain, by imagining something. Now, what exactly am I talking about? Well, word associations; this is kind of vague; should be wacky and memorable, maybe slightly less vague, a wacky memorable visual about a word. I like that, that's getting closer to what a mnemonic is.

So I'm gonna give us an example here. Lambaste or lambaste. Either pronunciation is fine. It means to really yell at someone. So if you can imagine a drill sergeant in the Marine Corps, yelling at the first time soldiers.

He is going to yell so much that he's tongue lashing them. That is an example of lambasting. Okay, there it is. So maybe you picture this drill sergeant and he's lambasting people. Guess what? That is not wacky and that's not memorable.

It's just a drill sergeant yelling at people. Now, I want to imagine that it's your job. To cook lamb for your family. Let's just say your family eats lamb for the sake of the argument. So you are cooking the lamb, you put it in the oven, you put it on for 400 and you go about your day.

So you say okay the lamb is cooking, ding-a-dun-a-dun. About two hours later after Facebooking and IM or instagraming or whatever it is. You do, he smells something burning and guess what it's the lamb, you totally forgot the lamb and so you go to the lamb and you look through the oven and you turn on that little oven light and inside you see this angry lamb head and it's lambasting you for forgetting to turn off the timer.

Turn on the timer! Or at least turn off the temperature so the lamb doesn't burn. And it's saying, don't burn me again, you were supposed to baste me! And there's that crazy lamb head. Now, obviously that sounds somewhat insane. But if you imagine the lamb head yelling at you, then that is a wacky and hopefully a memorable visual every time you see the word lambaste.

Now, the thing about mnemonics is, the best mnemonics are often the ones that you come up with yourself. That was my crazy mnemonic, it's worked for me, it helped me remember the word. But maybe that didn't work for you because, hey you just don't like lamb. Fine, but think of your own creative way. And again has to be visual and it has to be wackier, at least the wackier the better.

So those are or that is one example. Let's just do another one. Doleful, so, I see dole I think of pineapples. Now the word doleful means kinda sad and mournful. So I pictured this pineapple and it's really sad. And what does a sad pineapple look like?

Well, when it cries, it cries these big, fat pineapple tears. Big yellow droplets of tears, and you can just see its little pineapple mouth moving and screaming, why? Because it's about to get chopped up, so it's very sad and doleful. Again, wacky, silly, stupid, sure. But if you can come up with ones and they work for you, mnemonics are very powerful ways of remembering words.

Finally, mnemonics, or another way of remembering words, are kind of being creative about the structure of a word and so, for instance, this word, loathe. Well, it looks very much like this word, loath. Notice what's the difference. Well, this loath right here ends with an H. There's no E at the end.

One of them means to hate intensely. The other one means to be reluctant. Which one is which? Well notice the last four letters here of loathe, A-T-H-E. If you scramble these you get H-A-T-E, hate. Easy way to remember it, so when you see this loathe, you know that's the one that means unwilling or reluctant to do something.

Then one final one, discrete. Discrete sounds an awful lot like discreet. The second one, the one I'm writing right here, means you don't wanna draw attention to yourself in a social situation. This other one, discrete, means broken up into two separate distinct groups, just as on the SAT, math and verbal are discrete, they're broken into different sections.

So what's the clever way of remembering this well notice the t here. What does the t do to the two e's in the first discrete. It breaks them up into two separate groups, so it kind of comes in between them. And again that's just a creative way of remembering a word, it doesn't always have to be a visual, but again, if you can be creative, if you can put these words in your long term memory, using them throughout the day, you'll be far more likely to remember them test day.