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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Memorable pictures and puns guarantee quick recall, April 7, 2006
Reviewer: Sue Alpaugh, English teacher from New Jersey
I was very pleased with my students' responsiveness to Philip Geer's book Simon's Saga, and with its effectiveness as a tool for learning and recalling the meanings of advanced words.
Recently I've been trying out Picture These SAT Words! and its flashcards with my classes. The pictures and accompanying puns that integrate the sound links for word recall are very creative and funny. My students really like the zany ideas behind them, and also appreciate the rhythm and rhyme of the puns. Another excellent thing about this method is that the sound link itself comes as close as it possibly can to the actual sound of the word.
One favorite is the difficult word "iconoclastic." The sound link is Ike Kono's class.The picture shows a teacher, Mr. Ike Kono, writing on a blackboard. His students are seen being "iconoclastic" (attacking cherished traditions). One student is sticking pins into a small Santa Claus doll. Others are raising their hands to suggest the abolishment of schools, tests, and Thanksgiving. The pun below the picture reads: Iconoclastic students in Ike Kono's class.
Another example that really amuses my students is "soporific," another difficult word which means "marked by sleepiness." The sound link given is soap horrific. The picture shows an alert old man sitting in a bathtub scrubbing himself, surrounded by little devils and snakes rising up out of the water. On the floor in front of the tub is a discarded soap wrapper upon which is written "soap horrific." From the bathroom door two old ladies look in on this scene. One says "He used to fall asleep in the bath until he tried Soap Horrific." The pun below the picture reads: He isn't soporific when he uses Soap Horrific.
As with Simon's Saga, I would rate Picture These SAT Words! and Picture These SAT Words in a Flash very highly as advanced vocabulary building tools. The book teaches 300 important SAT words, and the box of flashcards is a selection of 200 from the book. Both are fun and both have their advantages. The book has excellent exercises after each unit that reinforce the sound link and ensure that the words are learned. The set of flashcards offers the added dimension of fun and games.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Making SAT Vocab Come to Life, April 21, 2010
This review is from: Picture These SAT Words! (Paperback)
As an academic tutor, I have purchased this book numerous times for my SAT students. Everyone knows SAT vocab can be rather painful--to say the least. Picture These SAT Words helps visual learners not only understand the definition of hard vocabulary words, but also associate each word with a visual cartoon. Each cartoon relates to the sound of its vocabulary word, so retrieving the cartoon from memory becomes relatively easy with word association. I recommend this resource to any student that finds visual association helpful when studying. Some of the cartoons are rather humorous, which never hurts the memorization process!
Stacy Padula, Author of Montgomery Lake High #1: The Right Person
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Cutesy, and lively, but not necessarily a great help., January 27, 2011
This review is from: Picture These SAT Words! (Paperback)
It's a book that illustrates SAT words with a cute comic and words that go along to the picture to help you remember each one. Often times the word itself will be split up into similar sounding words to help remember it, and some of the comics and word-nym things are quite silly!
I think it's an adorable, and cutesy way to learn vocab! It's not really effective, and when I was studying them, I did already know most of the words, but I do think it adds so fun into cramming. I don't really learn well with these word remember things, but some might. The exercise sections are rather weak, and tend to stick with words in their own respective sections, not cumulative reviews like they should be. And the exercises are far too easy - just a basic understanding of each word should be enough, guessing from a middle schooler could probably supply the right answer.
I think it's more like a novelty than a helpful study aide, really. I don't think I would spend money on it, but I'd check it out of a library! Good for some fun, but not for serious SAT students.
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