Customer Reviews

1100 Words You Need to Know

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I recently purchased the 2000 edition to use with my college-bound students who need more vocabulary work, as, for many of them, English is not their first language. The presentation and layout are excellent, the extracts are interesting and informative, and the "Panorama" section is relevant. I am concerned, however, about the errors in the answer section and the occasional typo. I have found a total of 21 errors - surely too high for a text which aims to "improve college grades" and to help you "score high on the SAT1". Check the answers carefully - the errors are pretty obvious and so should have been spotted before publication. These spoil an otherwise excellent book which should have had 5 stars.

This vocabulary book is fantastic!

You work on 10 words for each of 5 days, and then a weekly quiz. The text stimulates and preps your mind to soak up the definition of each word by first showing you its use in a paragraph, then testing you with fill-in-the blank sentences. Finally,you learn the definitions via a matching quiz. But, after the paragraph and blank sentences, you almost know the definitions already! Also, each day a language idiom is presented as a further boost to a highly functional vocabulary.

This is a great vocabulary book. I highly reccommend it.

The method used in this book is the best technique I have ever seen. Each word is used in context, and you are encouraged to guess the meaning. Then you review the meaning using a matching test and a fill in the blank test. It is a stroke of brilliance that the words you have already learned are continually reviewed by being used over and over again in the following chapters. Each week has 4 lessons plus a review lesson, and a different storyline is used each week. These stories are of high interest and very clever. It is hard to put this book down; I have to restrain myself from going on to the next page! My only regret is that I didn't have this book 20 years ago!

I have been using this vocabulary development book in teaching students from 8th grade Honors English up through high school levels. I really like the concept and the way the exercises are developed. I was pleased to see the changes from the 2nd edition to the 3rd and now I am anxiously waiting to see the 4th edition. However, I find that some of the idiomatic phrases have fallen into such disuse as to not be of much practical help. I also question the connotations implied in the context of some of the vocabulary words being used in the vignette. I still think it is the best book available for vocabulary development and I use it continuously throughout the school year.

I tried wordlists and many different techniques to master vocabulary words, yet for whatever reason, I found this book most helpful in enabling me to remember the words. The short passages that you read with the words in context in each section repeat words that you have already mastered, or should have, and I think this method works particularly well. Moreover, the words that you study in this book are extremely useful for the GRE, SAT, or just strengthening your vocabulary in general.

I also bought this to help prepare for the GRE. It is broken so that you can learn five new words a day for 46 weeks (plus an idiom a day). I agree with a previous reviewer in that some of the definitions of the idioms, while they may be text-book, are not concurrent with today's usage. I still found myself referring to the dictionary when trying to understand a new word (hence the 4 stars--I thought some of the definitions were too brief to be fully understood). However it's a great series of exercises which can be done at whatever rate you wish (I usually do one or two "weeks" in one day). There are also weekly reviews and "book so far" reviews, if that makes any sense.

I use this book while tutoring adults who are learning English as a second language. Each day, 5 new words are presented, activities incorporating the new words can be finished in less than a half hour and a review for the words learned for the week is also available. The words used are challenging but common. During my time helping the students i also get a good vocabulary review!

Pros:

-The structure of the daily lessons is conducive to learning. Only five words are learned per day, first by exposure to the words in the natural context of a short paragraph, then by filling the words into cloze sentences, and finally by matching the words to their abbreviated definitions.

-There are plenty of review activities at the end of each week of study, in addition to a cumulative review at the end.

-Some of the daily paragraphs are linked together throughout the week of study, forming fascinating multi-part mini-stories.

-Overall, I recommend the book. It's easy to use, and most of the daily paragraphs are interesting. I might use this book for my students, but I'd use it cautiously, as some sections of the book are quite a bit better than others.

Cons:

-While it's a difficult task indeed to create an interesting paragraph for students to read that includes five chosen new vocabulary words, I sometimes got the impression that the authors just weren't trying hard enough to make the words smoothly integrate into the paragraphs. Many of the paragraphs are sullied by short, choppy sentences with awkward uses of vocabulary words. Some of the paragraphs remind me of something a young student might write if he were given five completely new words and a shaky understanding of them.

-We all know that the only effective vocabulary programs include plenty of repeat exposure over time to the vocabulary words. Because the authors were trying so hard to include repeated exposure to the words, a flaw in the writing emerges midway through the book: the paragraphs stop being interesting and readable, and they become so bogged down in flashy words that it's torturous to read them. I'm an English teacher, so I was able to muddle through these turgid paragraphs, but I wouldn't ask a student to read them. Even worse, it's possible that impressionable students may start imitating this grossly affected style of writing. Take, for example, a sentence from the paragraph on page 176: "The paramount objectives of the studies are to eradicate anything that will impede the discovery of creative talent and to exploit this talent to the limit." Sure, the sentence makes sense, but I'd hate to see it in one of my student's essays.

-The book does a fairly good job of teaching slangy idioms, which I could see as effective for students who are learning English as a foreign language, but the example sentences given for these idioms become overloaded with previously introduced idioms. The sentences become ridiculous, and it is my hope that no student would imitate those sentences in speech or writing. Here's an example from page 262: "The modus operandi was leading up a blind alley and they were barking up the wrong tree." Even to a native English speaker, that sentence doesn't make much sense.

I bought this book a few years ago. It's still a great book. I highly recommend it to anyone.

As I'm a late learner in my forties, I would say this book has much augmented my vocabulary. Moreover, I've bought nearly ALL the vocabulary books from this website. I have SAT vocabulary books as well, all great too.
My review on this book: I rate it as one of the very BEST. I most read this book during tea breaks, during babysitting. It has all the key answers to questions, articles with examples of usage, etc. Blank spaces around text allow me to pencil down my notes, mostly examples of usages. Every page has my pencilled notes. That's how much I love the book.

This is a good book overall. It gives you 5 words a day, uses them all in a paragraph, lists the pronunciations, has you complete 5 sentences with the words, and then finishes with a multiple choice quiz, which matches the words to the definitions.

Unfortunately, the definitions are frequently overly simplified. The definitions listed are great if you want a minimal and general meaning of the word, but for many words the definitions are inadequate if you want the full meaning of the words.

I use online dictionaries to supplement this book. I do this book's exercises to get a general meaning of the word, and to see how they are used, and then I check the online dictionaries to get the full definition. I prefer merriam-webster.com and thefreedictionary.com. They are both excellent sites to use in addition to the book.