This page is written for you, the student. The word list and the roots page are the materials; this is how to use them.
Why words are worth the time
There is no section on the HSPT called Vocabulary, but words are everywhere. The synonym, antonym, analogy, and classification items in Verbal Skills all depend on them. Reading has a run of items that ask what a word means in the passage. Some Language items turn on word choice. Add it up and something like a quarter of the questions on the test are decided by whether you know the words, and no other single skill touches that many points.
The good news is that the test never asks for a definition. Every vocabulary question is really a matching question: which choice is closest, which is the opposite, which does not fit. That changes what "knowing a word" has to mean. You do not need the dictionary entry. You need the word's general sense, and often just its charge.
The method
Keep a word journal
Any time you read or hear a word you do not know, write it down. Then, when you can, find out what it means, from a person or a dictionary, and write a sentence of your own that uses it. The sentence is the important part. A word you have put into your own sentence is a word you will recognize on the test. A definition you copied is not.
A notebook works. So does a notes app, or a stack of index cards with the word on one side and your sentence on the other. What matters is that it is one place and you add to it every day.
Say the words out loud
Use a new word in real conversation the day you learn it. It will feel awkward the first time. That awkwardness is what makes it stick, because you will remember the moment you used it. And when someone else uses a word you do not know, ask. Nobody minds, and you get the meaning with the context attached.
Picture it
For a word that will not stay put, search for it in an image search. You will get pictures, not definitions, and a picture of someone being belligerent teaches the word faster than any gloss.
Read something every day
Nothing else builds vocabulary as reliably as reading, because you meet words in context, which is exactly how the Reading section presents them. Fifteen minutes a day from something you chose: a novel, a magazine, sports writing, science news. Different kinds of writing use different words, so vary it. Every unfamiliar word goes in the journal.
The charge trick
Almost every word carries a charge. Generous, lucid, resilient are positive. Feeble, devious, tedious are negative. Conventional, dormant, tentative are roughly neutral. The charge is the easiest thing about a word to remember, and on the HSPT it is often all you need.
Here is why. A synonym item gives you a word and four choices. If the given word is negative and two of the choices are positive, those two are gone before you have thought about meaning. An antonym item works the same way in reverse: the answer must have the opposite charge. Even when you cannot recall what a word means, you can often recall how it felt when you heard it, who said it, and whether it was a compliment. That memory is the charge, and it is worth points.
The word list marks every word with its charge. When you review, say the charge out loud before the meaning.
Word families
Words are easier to hold in groups than alone. After the charge, try sorting new words by what they describe.
- Feelings: elated, morose, indignant, apprehensive, ambivalent
- Ways of speaking: candid, concise, verbose, reticent, eloquent
- Ways of acting: diligent, impetuous, furtive, meticulous, reckless
- Judgments about things: flimsy, durable, superfluous, pertinent, dubious
A family gives you a second handle on the word. If you remember reticent belongs with the speaking words, you have already narrowed its meaning to "some way of speaking," and the charge tells you it is the quiet kind.
Roots for the words you have never seen
You will meet words on the test that are not in any list you studied. That is guaranteed, and it is fine, because most English words are built from parts, and the parts repeat. Bene means good, so benevolent and beneficial are positive before you know anything else. Mal means bad, so malicious is negative. Circum means around, spect means look, so circumspect is someone who looks all around before acting.
You do not need every root. The roots page has the ones that pay off on this test. Learn a handful each session, and when you write a word in your journal, underline the part you recognize.
A ten-minute session
- Two minutes: review the previous session's words. Cover the meanings, say the charge and a sentence.
- Five minutes: five to eight new words from the list or your journal. Write your own sentence for each.
- Two minutes: three roots or prefixes. Find one word you already know that uses each.
- One minute: pick two of today's words to use out loud before bed.
Done daily for eight weeks, that is roughly 300 words and every root on the page. Done the weekend before the test, it is a few dozen words and some nerves. Start now.
For where these words actually appear, see the synonyms, antonyms, and vocabulary in context pages.