Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Old SAT Verbal (With Analogies) and IQ

Hi, mckinley. I sometimes like to read online articles if said article gets straight to the point rather than being a word salad. Unfortunately in ninth grade I was a bit arrogant, so I read 18 classic novels (Jules Verne, HG Wells) over the year just to show off. What I consider complex is usually either an AP textbook or any other assigned reading.

Wow. I don't think I can even name 18 Wells and Verne novels. Based on your other reading interests, I would recommend you check out Stephen Baxter. He's written authorized sequels to Time Machine and War of the Worlds (The Time Ships and Massacre of Mankind). Baxter has degrees in mathematics and engineering, so you often find discussions of real world science or math in his books. The books often feature notes at the end to refer you to the real world articles. I would say Baxter is like a modern H.G. Wells. Arthur C. Clarke is another similar author with strong science and literary skills. They also collaborated on a few books.

Or for an alternative, try Frankenstein.

You may already be familiar with (or have read) all those, but if you are I hope you'll just appreciate the suggestions and maybe they will spark some other ideas.

If you're curious about what sort of things they used to assign, we read Great Expectations, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, Grapes of Wrath, Brave New World and a lot of short stories and other things I forget since it was 20 years ago. Shakespeare is quite entertaining once you realize they're all filled with raunchy humor no matter how tragic. And Shakespeare actually invented some modern words which is cool from a vocabulary standpoint.

In my English class, Romeo and Juliet and Of Mice and Men are a part of the 9th grade curriculum, and Tempest was covered last year. I understood the words fine when they were within context. Also, only about 28% of the novels I read were by both Verne or Wells.

The main problem is that I usually do not remember the word meanings in an isolated sense. I can do it fine on the new SAT (vocab in context), but when isolated I draw a blank.


I will definitely check out your suggestions when I have time! Those sure sound really interesting.

It sounds like you understand the vocabulary in context, but can't necessarily articulate a specific dictionary-style definition on demand. That's not too unusual; most of us can use at least some words that we can't define--and, of course, using and understanding them correctly is more important than defining them. Sometimes it helps when one encounters words in multiple contexts, each of which adds a bit of nuance to the meaning of the word. You can also try thinking about how you would explain the meaning of the sentence, with the word in context, to someone else. That might help you solidify how you articulate the meaning, so that it becomes a little bit more accessible in other contexts, or in isolation.

Your English curriculum is fairly typical of what high schools expect now. And reading numerous classic novels doesn't have to be a mark of arrogance, if you don't rub it in other people's faces! The novels are worth reading in their own right.

I would second Arthur C. Clarke. You may know that he was a legitimate scientific thinker (the Clarke geostationary orbit is named after him, as he was the first to posit its existence--in one of his novellas, no less). Isaac Asimov's literary merit is a bit less than Clarke's, but his scientific bona fides are equally strong (PhD in chemistry). Larry Niven's Ringworld series is also high-concept classic science fiction.

What else do you like to read?

aeh, I think you hit the nail on the spot regarding the problem. Yes, I meant to show that what my English class is doing is standard for all high school students.


Sometimes, I like to read non-fiction if it intrigues me, but I usually lose interest in the reading real quickly. It takes brute force to focus on the reading, especially since the passages are extremely dense! This is especially true with the SAT English section. I used to be on an upward trajectory with both Math and English scores, but now my English score is decreasing, sometimes down to a 560 from an original 670...


Anyway, I usually like to read books that are a little bit below my grade level (embarrassing much?), because it doesn't usually exhaust me.

Nothing wrong with reading some books below your grade level--I still enjoy children's literature and YA fiction from time to time. I suggested audiobooks earlier exactly because it's less exhausting. You can also combine it with other activities, such as listening while riding a bike or out for a run.

Definitely! Thank you so much for your suggestions!

By the way, what would be an example of an extremely hard SAT analogy and antonym question from before 1994? An extremely hard math question form before 1994 as well? I just want to test my skill to see how well I would do with such questions, and I cannot find any from pre-1994 on the internet at all.

This isn't exactly what you were looking for, but you might find this history of the SAT interesting. It has a practice test from a really old version, from 1926, and examples of easy, medium, and hard items from various iterations if the SAT, though not if every version.
https://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/RR-03-10-Lawrence.pdf

To aeh, I tried some of those problems, and I was unable to figure out the meaning of a lot of the words (virtue, divulged, esoteric).