Tag Archives: vocab

The Need For Speed Reading: 5 Tips On How To Read Faster

Need For Speed Reading

Have you ever seen a true speed reader?  Check out this video of a speed reader in action.  Although, to be honest, we weren’t talking about speed reading out loud.  We are talking about the kind of speed reading that will get you ahead academically, no need to sound like a chipmunk on 5-hour energy!

Speed reading is a handy skill.  In fact, let’s not even call it speed reading. Instead, we’ll call it “Learning to read faster.”  Research has shown that as you read, your eyes are also moving around and seeing other words on the page at the same time, which can slow you down.  There are also a lot of “filler” words used in text to make it grammatically correct but don’t really add to the meaning.

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How to Use Flash Cards Effectively

How to use flashcards effectively

Having a solid vocabulary is an indispensable tool for success for any person in their academic or professional career. Undoubtedly, the best way to increase your vocab would be to read challenging literature, but let’s face it: in today’s world sometimes it’s hard to find the time or the patience. Sadly, with the huge internet boom many people have replaced their time reading real “vocab-building” literature, with surfing the internet. While your average individual might end up reading the same quantity of words, the quality of the material read leaves a lot to be desired, as most websites aren’t thinking in terms of reading difficulty or vocabulary-building and usually won’t quite challenge a third-grader.

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Links -> Vocab Tools 2

Freerice - Private Tutoring

Beef up your vocabulary and save the world at the same time! FreeRice donates 10 grains of rice to the World Food Program every time you get a word right. Not only will you be helping out the needy, which is its own reward, the wordgame is actually pretty addictive.

If you set up a profile on the website, it’ll keep track of all the words whose definitions you knew, and those you missed, so the test adapts to your vocabulary. The more words you get right, the harder the words it’ll throw at you, making it one of the better vocab tools available.

Links: Vocab Tools 1

Merriam Webster - Private Tutoring

 

Online dictionaries as vocab tools:

Use the Merriam-Webster website to really get to work on your vocabulary. In addition to being an excellent free and online dictionary, Merriam-Webster also has an extremely useful word of the day option, making it one of the best vocab tools out there. They will send you a word every single day in your email. These will be words you’ll definitely need for your SAT but there will also be many rare words that you wouldn’t normally come across. Merriam-Webster will also give you the history and etymology of these words, which, trust us, is way more interesting than it sounds.