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Not sure if this is a good comparison. For SAT, GRE you need to know a word innately, be able to use it in a proper context, understand homonyms, distinguish be

by jgr0 6y ago

Not sure if this is a good comparison. For SAT, GRE you need to know a word innately, be able to use it in a proper context, understand homonyms, distinguish between similar words and know which one to use in the given prompt etc. Yes, this does involve remembering long lists of words, but there is a lot of context and I would consider this proper language learning. It is vastly different from the memorization referred to in the article.

loxs 6y ago
From my experience as an English language student (non-native), I disagree to some extent. Taking (and learning) the SAT is quite a different experience than learning the language. It seems that people who are good at "taking tests" excel at it and this does not correlate completely with their ability to use the language. Of course often they ALSO learn the language (by other means), but I know people who successfully took the SAT in order to participate in student exchange programs and when they go to the USA they realize that they are quite poor at English and tend to stick to ethnic communities, because they are not comfortable to use the language at a higher level. On the other hand, if you study for the SAT when you already know the language, it seems to indeed improve your English a lot.
- jgr0 6y ago
  Ok, my experience is with GRE, and my assumption was that SAT would be something similar. For GRE, to get a good score (85+ percentile) you need to score really well in the comprehension section, which has a significant weightage. It requires considerable command over English vocabulary, its idiomatic usage, and of course along with other things like logical thinking, keen observation etc. Merely remembering word lists without understanding its contextual usage would only get you so far. Definitely not the kind of success exhibited in the article.
- DFHippie 6y ago
  I think being good at test taking correlates with perfectionism. The ones who test well but then stick to speakers of their native language may simply be perfectionists who are horrified at being seen as stupid when their English isn't perfect.
  - loxs 6y ago
    As far as I can attest (I studied together with them), this is not the case :)
watwut 6y ago
I have seen people memorizing these rare words before SAT. They passed the test but the whole exercise still appeared useless. They were not to start using these words, they just memorized them and we're conscious about not using them. It was not proper language learning at all, that one looks completely differently.
johnwalkr 6y ago
I’m a native English speaker that took the GRE with only limited time to study. I picked up some practice tests and quickly decided to use 100% of my study time to learn vocabulary which seemed to be recommended to bump up the language sections. I learned words in context but only in a way to write a word in one context and understand a word in 1-2 contexts. I made a 20 minute “podcast” of the 200 or so new-to-me words and listened to it on repeat. The singular word I can actively recall 10 years later is “ennui” because it resonated at the time and to this day. I can probably passively recall 50 of the words. Anyway all that is to say I felt my study was a bit more on the memorization side and agree with assertions that the GRE checks test-taking abilities more than capability. The math parts are a joke as one can reverse-check answers a, b, c, d In a fraction of a time It takes to actually solve the question. Grammar parts are also a joke as native speakers can intuit “a is to b as x is to y” problems easily, but non native speakers can easily miss some nuance or second meaning. But in daily life, this linguistic problem rarely occurs without a lot of extra context or body language. Bad test overall.

by jgr0 6y ago

loxs 6y ago

From my experience as an English language student (non-native), I disagree to some extent. Taking (and learning) the SAT is quite a different experience than learning the language. It seems that people who are good at "taking tests" excel at it and this does not correlate completely with their ability to use the language. Of course often they ALSO learn the language (by other means), but I know people who successfully took the SAT in order to participate in student exchange programs and when they go to the USA they realize that they are quite poor at English and tend to stick to ethnic communities, because they are not comfortable to use the language at a higher level. On the other hand, if you study for the SAT when you already know the language, it seems to indeed improve your English a lot.

jgr0 6y ago
Ok, my experience is with GRE, and my assumption was that SAT would be something similar. For GRE, to get a good score (85+ percentile) you need to score really well in the comprehension section, which has a significant weightage. It requires considerable command over English vocabulary, its idiomatic usage, and of course along with other things like logical thinking, keen observation etc. Merely remembering word lists without understanding its contextual usage would only get you so far. Definitely not the kind of success exhibited in the article.
DFHippie 6y ago
I think being good at test taking correlates with perfectionism. The ones who test well but then stick to speakers of their native language may simply be perfectionists who are horrified at being seen as stupid when their English isn't perfect.
- loxs 6y ago
  As far as I can attest (I studied together with them), this is not the case :)

watwut 6y ago

I have seen people memorizing these rare words before SAT. They passed the test but the whole exercise still appeared useless. They were not to start using these words, they just memorized them and we're conscious about not using them. It was not proper language learning at all, that one looks completely differently.

johnwalkr 6y ago

I’m a native English speaker that took the GRE with only limited time to study. I picked up some practice tests and quickly decided to use 100% of my study time to learn vocabulary which seemed to be recommended to bump up the language sections. I learned words in context but only in a way to write a word in one context and understand a word in 1-2 contexts. I made a 20 minute “podcast” of the 200 or so new-to-me words and listened to it on repeat. The singular word I can actively recall 10 years later is “ennui” because it resonated at the time and to this day. I can probably passively recall 50 of the words. Anyway all that is to say I felt my study was a bit more on the memorization side and agree with assertions that the GRE checks test-taking abilities more than capability. The math parts are a joke as one can reverse-check answers a, b, c, d In a fraction of a time It takes to actually solve the question. Grammar parts are also a joke as native speakers can intuit “a is to b as x is to y” problems easily, but non native speakers can easily miss some nuance or second meaning. But in daily life, this linguistic problem rarely occurs without a lot of extra context or body language. Bad test overall.