The Flaw of Test Prep Workbooks

Cindy Riedl
Sep 28, 2009

The only way to assure that students retain the words they are exposed to is to see those words in their reading, hear them used in conversation and in their writing during writing to learn or to inform responses – over and over – in meaningful ways.  End of the week tests do not assure retention.  Even cumulative reviews will not  do it.  They simply extend the amount of time before the word is forgotten.  If they do not retain it, what is the point?  Using the SAT workbook approach to increasing vocabulary simply means that students are going through the motions, but the time is wasted because they do not retain the meaning of words long term.

So what can teachers do to prepare their students for the SATs? Take a look at what is offered when ‘SAT words’ are searched on the Internet!

“Each of the 10 word lists contains 100 important words.  Make a commitment to learn one list a week.  Go through each list and test yourself (or, better still, get a friend to test you) one week later to reinforce your learning.”
“Remember - work on vocabulary is never a waste of time.  It pays dividends in terms of your final SAT score, but more importantly, it makes you a more educated person.”

Think again!  The rule is - if you do not use the words, you lose the words! The question is why are we not teaching these words throughout the junior and senior years?  Why are we waiting to cram them in during a short period of time?  If they make an individual a more educated person, why are we not integrating them in every course of study during middle and high school? Some of those words could apply to intermediate grades.  What is wrong with this picture?  SAT workbooks have been a practice since the arrival of the tests – yet no one has a clue why students fail to retain the words they have been practicing in isolation.

Why? The explanation is so simple that it is actually painful to recognize its reality!  What is worse – many teachers continue to beat this ‘dead horse’ because they have always done it that way or find it overwhelming to make sure that during junior and senior high these words are gradually introduced in all content areas where a natural fit exists.  Instead, hundreds of words are being rehearsed in isolation without a context using the workbook experience and no attempt is being made to create meaningful connections to what students already know.  The mind needs to organize and categorize as it makes meaning of new words.  Also, to retain these words, a method of transfer to long term memory is required where rich understandings are cultivated and relationships to other words are created.  For information to reach long term memory it requires multiple meaningful exposures to new words that are then applied consistently in writing and speaking.  Teachers need to use these words in their conversations and during instruction making connections more meaningful – in other words – model, model, model the language of the educated.  Those words need to become second nature to how we express ourselves to students during basic conversations and during instruction.  Furthermore, students need to be encouraged to use these words and are rewarded when they do.

Thinking that these words will occur naturally during exposure to a variety of literature has limited support.  “Incidental word learning during wide reading is highly overrated and not sufficient to enhance the vocabulary development of students especially when more than 90 percent of words students encounter in their reading occur less than once in a million words of text.” (Nagy & Anderson, 1984)

“One of the most useful findings from Jenkins’ study (1984) is that even superficial instruction on words greatly enhances the probability that students will learn the words from context when they encounter them in their reading.  When students receive direct instruction on words, their ability to comprehend these new words increases by a factor of about one-third.” (Classroom Instruction That Works, Marzano, Pickering and Pollack, 2001)

Also, according to Powell (1980), one of the best ways to learn a new word is to associate the word with an image.  This rarely happens when students are independently assigned a list of words and tasks in a SAT workbook.

And, there rests the challenge!  How do teachers provide meaningful vocabulary instruction on the increasing number of words that might appear during the SATs?  Again – why wait until the crunch of high school to begin addressing these words?  Would it not be more productive to do a school wide study to determine which words could be taught gradually with a natural fit to the different subject areas?  Teachers from all courses of study should play a role in this responsibility, not just the English department.  Consider the adjective, ostensible, which means appearing as genuine or real.  Would it be possible to use this word in the study of Ancient History when referring to artifacts of a time period and then making the connection to the behavior of seniors?  An excellent reference for teachers that can help students develop their talents of association with imagery is Vocabulary Cartoons I & II, SAT Word Power (Building an Educated Vocabulary with Sight and Sound Memory Aids) by New Monic Books.  This publication will help the teacher or learner become more comfortable with the power of imagery and personal associations!

Furthermore, greater emphasis on teaching word parts, Greek and Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes, beginning as early as first grade, has tremendous impact on vocabulary and language development.  Knowledge of roots will give students a richer understanding of known words, clues to decipher unknown words, hints to help them learn new words quickly, memory joggers to recall nearly-forgotten words, and a grasp of how words are built.  Which is easier to learn, fifty roots or 100,000 new words? Instruction should tap into the fun of roots, so learning them should be fun too.  Once students learn some roots, they will start noticing them in the more challenging vocabulary words they encounter during their reading.

In conclusion, before the supplemental SAT vocabulary workbooks are trashed, it is important to involve staff in the planning of an alternative.  The cost of the workbooks is not the issue here.  The effectiveness of this stagnant rote method and the waste of time are the issues.  Novels and other selections being covered in English class with a focus on integrating recommended words often found on the SATs and using them during discourses and written responses in the classroom is only addressing the tip of the iceberg.  A comprehensive plan is needed where everyone on staff is involved with teaching and using the “vocabulary of the educated.”

“Being ticketed for running a red light is a mere peccadillo compared to driving while intoxicated”, exclaimed Mr. Warren to his students. “I concur,” responded a student. “Driving while intoxicated has become a pandemic on weekends. But teachers should set a virtuous example and abide by the laws.”

Would this conversation happen in the average high school classroom?