Word Smart: Building an Educated Vocabulary

There are a lot of vocabulary books out there. Most of them, we believe, aren’t that useful. Some contain too many words. Others contain too many absurdly difficult words. Some claim to be based on surefire tricks or “pain less” learning methods. Most aren’t very good at helping people learn new words of any kind. This book is different.

THE PRINCETON REVIEW APPROACH

The philosophy behind The Princeton Review is simple: We teach exactly what students need to know, and we make our courses smart, efficient, and fun. We were founded in the early 1980s, and just a few years later, we grew to have the largest SAT course in the country. Our success is in disputable. We’re proud to compare our results with those of any preparation course in the nation. In addition, our first book, Cracking the SAT, was the first of its kind to appear on The New York Times Best-Seller list.

In preparing students for the SAT and other standardized tests, we spend much of our time working on vocabulary. Despite what many people think, many “intelligence” or “aptitude” tests are largely tests of vocabulary.

The students who earn high scores on such tests are the students who know the right words. The success of our method is in part a result of our success in teaching vo­cabulary.