The Vocabulary Builder: The Practically Painless Way to a Larger Vocabulary - Softcover

Kesselman-Turkel, Judi; Peterson, Franklynn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0299192040 ISBN 13: 9780299192044

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004

Synopsis

THE STUDY SMART SERIES, designed for students from junior high school through lifelong learning programs, teaches skills for research and note-taking, provides exercises to improve grammar, and reveals secrets for putting these skills together in great essays.

The Vocabulary Builder offers entertaining crossword, fill-in-the-answer, multiple choice, and other word puzzles (with answers!) to help students learn a selection of 600 well-used but often misunderstood words.

About this title

About the Author

Judi Kesselman-Turkel and Franklynn Peterson write and publish the newsletter CPA Computer Report. They have written hundreds of articles and more than twenty books including The Author's Handbook, Good Writing, and The Magazine Writer's Handbook. They live in Madison, Wisconsin.

From the Back Cover

The Vocabulary Builder is a book of entertaining crossword, fill-in-the-answer, multiple choice, and other word puzzles (with answers) to help students learn a selection of 600 well-used but often misunderstood words. By meeting and reusing each word at least four times in the book's word games, its meaning is painlessly reinforced and retested. A mini-dictionary at the back fo the book defines and shows how to pronounce each word.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction (Some Up Front Words from the Authors)

We believe that vocabulary building should be fun and easy. That s why we created this little book of word games. We also believe that only useful words are worth learning to use: So instead of choosing words to fit a format or selecting them at random from a dictionary. as some other vocabulary-building books do, we've taken real words from the pages of current magazines that are found in high school and college classrooms and libraries. Then each word appears approximately four times through the book, often in slightly different context or form, so you can learn a word's several synonyms and definitions, not just one of its uses.

The 600+ words we've chosen are alphabetized at the end in a mini-dictionary whose definitions are as simple and clear as we can make them. The definitions aren't all-inclusive, and in some cases they would be more precise if we used words that are themselves uncommon and difficult to understand. When we had to decide between clarity and. precision, we opted for clarity.

For the person with. average vocabulary, the best way to begin using the book is to scan the back-of-the-book dictionary whenever an answer is elusive. Each time you look up a word, its meaning is reinforced. By the second or third time you meet a difficult word, it should no longer be a stranger. By the time you're halfway through these games even if you prefer to skip around rather than play them in order you should be able to do well without consulting the dictionary.

The individual who prefers challenge, or whose vocabulary is well above average, should consult the dictionary entries only for words he misses.

We hope you enjoy these games as much as we enjoyed inventing them, If you do, tell your friends and our publisher and we'll get to work on another volume of stumpers.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0299192040
• ISBN 13: 9780299192044
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 168