Core Vocabulary Flash Cards

Cards 1" x 4"
30 words per set
250 sets
7500 carefully selected words
Simple definition and sentence
Matching audio file for young children
30 minutes/day, ages 6-16

Why This Program?

Vocabulary study gets a bad rap. You know, Princeton Review, Kaplan and all those study guides designed to subvert the SAT? They target the student who has not acquired enough vocabulary to get into the college of his choice (usually due to lack of advanced reading and too much TV). So he memorizes a bunch of those big words, slips by, and forgets them within a month.

Let me say it clearly: this is not what we do here. Vocabulary study cannot compete with a lifetime of day in and day out vocabulary building. It is about learning vocabulary for life, and this vocabulary must be used over and over again in reading and writing, or it will be lost. Stephen King understood this: "Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule." In other words, vocabulary must be fully imbibed to be wielded with effect.

There are about 10,000 words that might show up on the SAT. Specific words (such as scientific jargon), easy words, and really obscure words will not show up. Easy words are picked up in day-to-day living. Specific words are needed only if you enter those particular fields. Obscure words are, well, obscure. It is the remaining ten thousand challenging words we wish to master. Not just because they are on the SAT, but rather because they will improve the student's educational productivity for the rest of his life. Those 10,000 words can be culled down with care to 7,500 by focusing on root words, and this is what Core has done.

The university testing racket seems silly, but it is smarter than you think. People with great vocabularies perform better statistically in the university (and naturally later in life) for a good reason: they possess a critical tool for transferring information. Remember, if you know less vocabulary, you will understand less and have a more difficult time expressing yourself.

Another reason the vocabulary testing game is quite clever is that there are only so many words one can cram in a year or two, so it's nearly impossible for even really smart students to truly subvert the SAT and move into that top five percent using a good memory alone. The student simply has to actually know the words, and this requires using the words over time. From the university's point of view, it's a fair bet any student commanding a massive vocabulary is well read and an advanced student. Hence, vocabulary is a pretty good metric for university admission criteria - and scholarship money.

This vocabulary program provides an organized system for the student to memorize and use difficult words, starting as young as six years old by using audio files. Ten years later, when the student is moving towards the SAT, he will have been using these difficult words for many years, not just memorizing and forgetting them. Students who are on the "conveyor belt" of institutional school will lack this year after year consistency. At best, they learn some words here and there, and then attempt to cram in difficult vocabulary during the final few years of high school. There is simply no competition: the Core student will have memorized and reviewed yearly every single word that will be on the SAT for years, as well as been recognizing these words in their reading and using them in their daily essays.

How does it actually work?

Materials:

Flash Cards, 30 cards per set
Audio files, matching each set
Digital player
30 minutes of time per day

Procedure:

1) Start with set #1. Organize the words so they are in the same order as the audio files play.
The student then listens to the audio files (word/definition/sentence) of thirty words, following along and reading the words out loud with the audio file.

When complete, the student reverses the order of the cards, putting them back in the original order. With each card he replaces he merely says the word, without the audio file.

2) Repeat step one again. Note: new sets are learned for two weeks, but on the second week, step two should be done without the audio file, with each missed cards repeated until without error.

TIME REQUIRED: 10 seconds/word (5 minutes) plus 2 seconds/word (2 minutes) to put them back in order. Total time: about 15 minutes.

3) The student also reviews a previously memorized set each day. To do this, he merely repeats the steps above for an old set, marching through the previously learned sets, a new one each day. Every set will thus be seen dozens of times.

Total time: 15 minutes.
The whole process takes about 30 minutes each day. This is a very minor investment for a complete mastery of English vocabulary.


Because the definitions and sentences are short and snappy, and the corresponding digital file creates an auditory response, the words are memorized through slow, steady repetition, not brute force. Students find this sort of memorization easy and fun.

The purpose of using an audio file:

· to become conditioned to moving at a rapid pace
· allow independent work without concern the words are being mispronounced
· provide an audio sensory input to aid memorization
· allow very young students to memorize more advanced words and sentences than they otherwise could, thus allowing them to start memorizing earlier and finishing before they take their SAT

Below is a step-by-step process of how to actually use the vocabulary cards. It may seem a bit regimented, but it pays to start the process right, so it becomes automatic and no teacher input is necessary later.

The Robinson Question

Robinson Curriculum is a $200 curriculum that provides printable public domain books and vocabulary cards. Two of my children used Robinson for over a year, starting at ages six and eight. However, we found this curriculum to have some serious deficits, and the vocabulary is especially poor. Why?

1) Robinson provides no "electronic" list of the vocabulary words in his curriculum. The words remain trapped in his software program in card format, and so the only way to compare them to SAT lists to see what you might be missing is to type them out, one by one. This took me weeks of work.

2) Robinson's vocab list has 6464 words, but these words are quite random in their selection. I compared Robinson's list to several well-known 5000 word SAT study lists, and unbelievably Robinson has only 2300 word matches with a standard 5000 word SAT list. Less than half!

3) Robinson's definitions and sentences for each word are often long and tedious, and thus very difficult for lower grade levels to pronounce. I therefore had to listen to my children study vocabulary every day merely to ensure my kids were pronouncing everything right.

4) Robinson's definitions and sentences are usually longer than is necessary, making them very difficult to memorize. The student gains nothing from memorizing more than he needs to. When memorizing over six thousand words, the student needs all the help he can get!

5) Vocabulary cards should have both sentences and definitions on the back of a single card. Robinson has this option, but when printed this way he provides only four cards per page, with no 'cut lines' on these pages. Robinson's standard cards (with individual sentence/definition) have cut lines and provide a reasonable 10 words/page, but who wants to memorize off two sets of cards? This is nearly twice the time required.

6) Many of Robinson's words are simply too basic to require memorization; remember, he includes 2700 words that are not even on standard SAT lists, words like amuse and anxiety. Young readers pick these words up on their own. Why should they memorize things they will learn anyway?


So how does Core compare?

• Nearly all 7500 words are potential SAT fodder.
• Words are organized by word length to become progressively more difficult
• Audio files allow for the student to gain proper pronunciation and accent
• Audio files allow for independent work with no teacher input
• Sentences and definitions are shorter and thus easier to memorize