There are more than 200,000 words in the 3rd
edition of The American Heritage Dictionary, and only 6 of those words will appear
on the Teacher Test. You may begin memorizing now...OR...You
could take a more rational approach to this section of the exam. Familiarize
yourself with vocabulary terms in other Test Prep booklets...AND...Practice the art of
generating or creating your own definitions.
To Create a Definition
- Look at the whole word.
- Look at its parts.
- Think about where you might have seen this word before.
- two words as a compound word
- common root word with a prefix and/or suffix
- derivative of a common word
Think about the kind of material or subject matter where you saw it.
- Determine its part of speech.
- Try sounding it out, placing the accent on various syllables.
- Try putting it in a sentence.
- Try writing it out in various forms.
- If you cannot come up with something, go to another question and come back to this
later. Do not leave any question unanswered.
To improve your vocabulary:
- read a newspaper every weekend; when you find a word you do not recognize, use the
context to figure out what the word might mean; then find the word in the Dictionary.
- pick up a novel and read it to relax in the weeks before the test.
- scan old textbooks for terms.
- study the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, George,
Time, Newsweek, or
Harper’s.
- read everything you can get your hands on.
- listen to National Public Radio News on WBUR.
- watch the Newshour on PBS.
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