Customer Reviews

Merriam-Webster's Vocabulary Builder

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Merriam-Webster's Vocabulary Builder , New Edition 2010 , written by Mary Wood Cornog, will be useful to undergraduates, journalists, editors and all who work in the communications field.

I have personally completed the first Unit out of thirty units ; well, it is money well invested as I felt my brain got a good workout. Here are two terms I definitely enjoyed learning about : reprobate, nestor . Let's see if you can make out their meaning from the following 2 sentences :

1 His wife finally left him, claiming he was a reprobate .

2 The guest of honor was a nestor among journalists .

There is an Introduction to the second edition outlining the 2 goals :

(1) to add a large number of words to your permanent working vocabulary
(2) to teach the most useful of the classical word-building roots to help you continue expanding your vocabulary in the future .

The author provides a knowledge of Greek and Latin roots, those that have produced the largest number of common English words, 250 of them roots.

Pronunciation symbols are provided to help recognize them when you hear them.

The 30 units discuss a total of 1 200 words in detail.
Quizzes folow each 8-word group along with review quizzes at the end of each unit.

Answers and a word index are provided at the end of the pocket book ; you cannot put the book in your pocket but it can be opened and held in one hand ,as it is no longer than an opened hand.

Useful also for GRE and TOEFL students .

I own the 1st edition of the Vocabulary Builder and like it a lot. Bought the second edition and it is even better. A lot of interesting words. The structure based on the word roots/suffixes/prefixes is very good. Sections presenting the words from history and mythology are exceptionally interesting to read.

Shipped quickly and is what it is described as.However, I wouldn't recommend this for anyone studying for the SAT(who presumably wants to do well.), unless they are a non native English speaker. Most of the words are fairly basic, and what I would expect an 8th grader to know. My friends who are foreign have said that this book has benefited them a lot, so it would be very good for someone who has recently moved to an English speaking country. Admittedly, I am a prodigious reader, so I was hoping for more of a challenge. If someone doesn't read as much in English as I do, they might benefit immensely from this book.

If you are looking for a reference book, this would not be it. When I ordered it, I was expecting else from merriam-webster, being that they are the leader in thesaurus' and dictionarys. This is more like a text-book, with sections that you have to read instead of browsing through it.

This is my my first buy of a Kindle edition book for a non-Kindle device. While Amazon's delivery to my Droid-X was flawless, the product does not format itself correctly on my phone. There are missing sections, and the navigation to next word entry is non-existent. I really do not know if this is problem of Amazon or the publishers. I was buying this dictionary primarily to have a handy reference and to not rely on ad-infested dictionaries out there. I am disappointed with the purchase. The product worked correctly on my windows laptop, though.