Strategy 1_1: Setting a goal

It is always a good idea to set a goal before we study anything, so we can estimate the amount of work that we are going to face and plan ahead for efficiency.

In this case, our goal is to memorize the words that frequently appear in the SAT/GRE exams. However, setting a goal vaguely, for instance, “I will memorize all the vocabulary for SAT/GRE exams” does not really plant the strong motivation in your mind. On the other hand, setting a specific goal like “I will memorize 2000 SAT/GRE words by the end of year” provides you not only the strong motivation but also the opportunity to constantly whip yourself to achieve the goal.

"It is always a good idea to set a goal before we study anything"

"Setting a specific goal...provides you not only the strong motivation but also the opportunity to constantly whip yourself to achieve the goal."

But, how many words do we have to memorize for SAT/GRE exams?

Well, according to the data that many SAT/GRE prep companies have, there are about 3500/5000 words that a test taker should know in order to get a high score in the SAT/GRE exams. However, we have to remind ourselves that this number is purely based on the past examinations and the likeliness that we will actually face those words on the day of our exams is around 70% (It's also based on the statistics. Don’t ask me how they know all this), which is not bad but still not satisfactory.

Fortunately, the exam makers are not evils, whose purpose is to fail as many test takers as possible. The definitions of other 30%, which will not appear on our frequent words list, are the ones that can easily be deduced from the given information on the exams.

Okay, this is so far about setting our specific goal and a little bit of information about the material that we are given to study, so let’s talk about our real problem in the next article: how are we going to memorize those huge amount of words?

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