Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that you found this post because your penurious self is Googling for ways to learn SAT vocabulary without spending any money. Today is your lucky day, though, friend-o. Although the multitudinous search results for things like “SAT vocab words” can be daunting to say the least, and a lot of what you’ll find is total dreck, there is some good, free stuff out there for those willing to sift through the morass.

I’ve been checking out some interactive online vocab tools for the past few days. Here are some resources I might come back to myself.

• Word lists for your calculator. “Yo dawg I heard you like the SAT so I put some words on your calculator so you can think about the SAT while you’re thinking about the SAT.” Seriously though, different people learn vocabulary in different ways, so a prudent instructor should be willing to try some unconventional approaches if a student isn’t responding well to the standard flash card approach. Maybe…put the words on a calculator instead?
• Visual Thesaurus. This list features “the 100 most common” SAT words, but clicking around inside the actual “visual thesaurus” will introduce you to tons more. Look for a word with a lot of branches coming off it as a starting point, and explore. I started at “benevolent” and just kept on going until my trial ran out. Not sure I’d pay for this, but it’s fun to poke around.
• Vocab Concentration. A little hokey, perhaps. This site also has word searches, matching games, and flash cards for what it claims are “the 100 most common” SAT words. Is it the same list as the Visual Thesaurus folks? I don’t know, I didn’t check.