This Is How the New SAT Will Test Vocabulary

“This Is How the New SAT Will Test Vocabulary” by Katy Steinmetz

A redesigned SAT due out in the spring of 2016 will no longer reward students for the rote memorization of semi-obscure word definitions, but instead emphasize “high utility” words they’re more likely to encounter in life.

Graduating seniors can throw their flash cards on the celebratory bonfire next year. When students sit down to try their pencils at the redesigned SAT in spring 2016, the questions about vocabulary are going to be different — remodeled and revised, and for champions of obscure words, perhaps transmogrified.

Students will no longer be rewarded for the rote memorization of semi-obscure definitions. Instead, the words that the SAT will highlight in vocabulary questions will be “high utility” words that students are likely to encounter in life and reading beyond those four hours in the testing location. Even the most studied students won’t be able to breeze through vocab sections, matching a word with definition B by reflex; they’ll have to read and gather from the passage exactly what a word means.  Read more via This Is How the New SAT Will Test Vocabulary | TIME.com.

Click HERE to see a sample vocabulary question (released by the College Board 3/2014)  for the redesigned SAT.