SAT® Vocab Challenge – I am now and will remain a proponent of “edutainment” until I am no longer capable of independent thought. Regardless of the stance some educators and parents might take, there is absolutely nothing wrong with making learning fun and if a student can learn something from playing a game, then why not take advantage of it?
It’s been a long time since I’ve had to really and truly study for a big test, but one thing’s for sure, the only study help I ever got was in the form of a friend drilling me over a book and a bowl of doritos. In the ever-growing app category of education, Modality has coupled with the Princeton Review to create SAT® Vocab Challenge.
While it’s designed around 250 total words, 100 of them have been identified by Princeton Review as the most frequently appearing words on the SAT®. SAT® Vocab Challenge proves to be a simply entertaining way to build advanced vocabulary skills. The intention of course, is to help prepare students for higher SAT® scores, but anyone interested in boosting their vocabulary skills could also benefit.
Features of SAT® Vocab Challenge include four games that focus on definitions, connotations, synonyms, and antonyms, a word index with definitions, pronunciations, and parts of speech, and a word tracker that keeps track of the words that have been mastered in all four games. SAT® Vocab Challenge is designed to be quick so that spare time can be more productive and uses a process of elimination type of format, which is a helpful skill for test-taking.
In each of the four word games, a word is given followed by three answers. Users eliminate the two incorrect answers by swiping the virtual index cards off screen. There is also an option to touch and hold the correct index card and shake your device to remove the remaining incorrect answers. I found this option to be a bit cumbersome and would have preferred a tap-to-select format, but some people may prefer it to the elimination process. Either way, SAT® Vocab Challenge should prove useful no matter your preferred study method.
Even if flash card-style studying is not your thing, using the alphabetical word index you can study the words individually and hear their pronunciation, view the definition, connotation, an antonym, synonym, part of speech, and an example sentence. When you do play the games, your progress in all four SAT® Vocab Challenge word games are recorded within the app so you can view the words you’ve mastered by game category within the word index.
By taking an advanced approach to vocabulary study skills, SAT® Vocab Challenge is intelligently designed to help build vocabulary mastery. Will it help you get a better SAT score? I can’t say. But it certainly could be a useful tool for those who would like to try.
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category: Editor’s Picks, Education, Languages