Welcome to my vocabulary lists!To the right, you see links to the lists! I compiled them over the last five years while teaching accelerated ESL to college-bound international students. My goal was to put some lists together that would allow students, teachers, and curriculum planners to cover as much relevant vocabulary as possible, either for classroom tasks or for the SAT, without actually memorizing the dictionary.

Together, the Top Frequency List and the Mid Frequency List have contained about 70-80% of the words on past SATs. As a group, the Top Frequency List, Mid Frequency List, and Low Frequency List have contained about 94% of the words on past SATs. Of course, this statistic applies to tests that were released AFTER the list was compiled: otherwise, it wouldn't be a very useful measurement.

Am I suggesting that all students need to memorize close 5000 words? Absolutely not! But many teachers need a very strong, comprehensive academic vocabulary list. . . one that contains hard words, but not random words. And some students make it a habit of learning 10 words a day for years, and they can use a good vocabulary source.

The last link in the sidebar will take you to Quizlet, an excellent online flash card site. I have already uploaded all these words to the site: if you click on the link, you will arrive at a list of these words in online flash card form, arranged into lessons. If you like, you can join the SesameWords group at Quizlet, which will allow you to join a discussion group.

One last thing: as you make use of this list, you may find that the definitions and synonyms are still a work in progress. For the most part, they are both accurate and useful, and they all come from reliable sources, but they are still in the process of being edited.

Best of luck to you in your college preparation!