YA novels incorporating SAT vocab learning

I was in Barnes & Noble not long ago, and in the reference/test prep section, saw a bunch of YA novels meant specifically for teaching SAT vocab painlessly. There was one vampire book, one sci-fi, I think there was one that looked kind of chick lit, etc. I paged through and saw that the vocab words have the definitions in footnotes right on the page where they appear in the text.

Has anyone read any of these, or does anyone know a teen who has? I think it's a neat approach, and would like to know what other people think.

I've read one of them. Mine was supposed to be a mystery. I don't remember what it was called, but I do remember I hated it.

The problem with those books is that they are far from painless, mostly because the plot and the language are tweaked (obviously consciously) to introduce words like 'antediluvian' (I can only imagine that comes up a lot with the vampire) while the rest of the dialogue is amazingly basic. To me it felt like an insult to my intelligence. Plus the plot was SO bad - apparently it's utterly unimportant what the story is so long as there are 585 words...

Also, I didn't think it was very useful in terms of learning vocabulary because most of the words are presented in context only once - which isn't really enough to remember the words independently from the story, and therefore not a whole lot of help for SAT vocab - where you usually get no context (oh, dreaded analogies).

So, it was a good idea, and maybe some of these are better than the one I read. But the one I read was AWFUL. I would rather have spent several hours going down vocab lists because it was so dreadful...

Never read one, but I think that having them in the footnotes kind of defeats the purpose - too easy for the eye to skim over. Actually taking a second to jot down the word and the page number, and then go look it up later (and go back to the context) would make the word stick better - you're reading it, writing it, understanding it, and then reading it again.

^#2. Ahh, I was afraid that might be the case. It's too bad that they didn't, for instance, go to a popular YA writer of vampire fiction and ask them to become involved, to get higher quality in plot, and to perhaps reach more readers.

^ #3. I see your point. But I think a minimal level of motivation must be there to begin with. If the teen reader just skims the footnote, even though he/she is ostensbily reading for the purpose of SAT vocab, then he/she is extremely unlikely to look up the word later.

It's almost a no-win situation, isn't it?!

I haven't seen one, but I think it is a good idea. I see it as a puzzle. I would like to have this as part of a writing course. You are given a list of words that must be included in the story to demonstrate their use while the definition is noted on the bottom of the page. The more a person writes like this the better the stories should become. It sounds like fun and people learn in different ways, so this may sink in better for some students. Too bad the only ones read have been ghastly.

> 5
I think it would be fun in a writing course. We did something similar for our Greek/Roman unit in my freshman English course - except ours was a comic book. It required some serious reaches at times (because all the words were stuff like arete) but it had its good points. :)

I've seen a few around but haven't picked on up.

I did see there was a manga one floating around and with some of the high school kids at my school that would be the only way they would pick up one of those.

Well at least they are trying to be creative with SAT Prep and not just giving you a book with just a list of words.

I'm pretty skeptical about the books. I don't know about other people my age, but I've learned a lot of vocabulary words by just reading books that incorporated them naturally and looking words up whenever I was unsure of their meaning. I've noticed that even then I don't really learn words without repetition. I agree with #2; if these books fail to repeat the words, they're useless as learning tools. If someone is really looking to learn new words, these books don't seem like they would be much help.

I was told to change at least fifty words in the first manuscript version of my own book because they were "too hard" for a teen audience. Clearly such words can only be used in carefully scripted "SAT prep" books, not in ordinary YA literature. In fact, every time I revise this ms, I dumb down the vocabulary some more. In reading more recent YA literature I have realized that it really is written with a pathetically limited vocabulary. I'm sorry to sound snitty and elitist, but it's true. Joan Aiken (who I am reading aloud to my kids) uses an infinitely more sophisticated vocabulary in her 'children's' books than almost any YA book I've read lately. Grumble grumble.

>9 annamorphic: That's really depressing.

A Northern light is a great coming of age, historical fiction read that weaves a love of words and vocabulary into the story. Not sure if they're SAT prep worthy, but I remember being challenged.