Tag: SAT tutor

Do you feel tranquil today?  How about boisterous, sluggish, blatant, or fractious?  Let someone know!

 

Sluggish; adj. Displaying little growth or movement; not making progress; seeming to be bottle necked or clogged to prevent advancement.

The traffic was so sluggish because of the accident that I was late for work.
Tranquility; n. Harmony; silence; quiet serenity; Undisturbed and peaceful.

I find such tranquility at the lake that I go there all the time.
Blatant; adj. Unpleasantly loud; irritatingly showy or obvious.

I blatantly disobeyed my mother and yelled at the mean man.
Boisterous; adj. Rowdy, rambunctious, and possibly out of control.

After having so much cake, the toddlers were boisterous.
Brattle; n. A rattling and crashing sound.

The brattle of metal clashing with metal is all I heard during the fight.
Brawl; v, n.

Verb: To have a loud and boisterous disagreement, possibly even a fight, but more likely just upsetting the calm and quiet.

I was suspended after I brawled on the playground when I was a child.

Noun: A loud, boisterous disagreement.

A brawl erupted at the bar, people fighting over a girl.

Adjective: brawling or brawly

The brawling crowd disturbed everyone trying to attend the ball.
Din; n. Disorder and noise; tumult and confusion.

The din at the even was so loud I couldn’t hear my friends talk.
Discordant; adj. Clashing in ideas or sound or philosophies; harsh with conflict.

The beautiful sound coming from the piano made the man scream in agony.
Fractious; adj. Unruly and noisy.

The fractious toddlers needed someone to guide them to be quiet.

Cranky or peevish.

I turn fractious if I don’t get a good nights sleep.
Hubbub; n. An upset or vehement protest or discontent; sometimes a loud, sustained noise.

The soccer victory created such a hubbub that the police were called.
Obstreperous; adj. Noisy and boisterous; sometimes even aggressive of defiant.

Her behavior became obstreperous when her boyfriend disappointed her.
Ostentatious; adj. Showy; characterized by a need to be noticed, not always favorably.

I admit I am ostentatious sometimes, wanting the press to notice me at the red carpets I am invited to.
Strident; adj. Loud and harsh; often grating and discordant; hard on the ears.

The strident hurricane alarm alerted everyone of impending danger.
Truculent; adj. Tending to argue and disagree, often vehemently and with great noise and commotion.

I become truculent when it comes to selling my stuffed animals at a good price.
Turbulent; adj. Violently upset or disturbed.

After the tornado the creek was turbulent and swept tree limbs away.

Having a restless or even revolutionary character.

The government climate was turbulent and so people were often afraid to leave the city.
Vociferous; adj. Offensively loud and often given to demonstration of agitated emotions or agitated outcry.

The lawyer vociferously spoke for the accused and everyone was nervous.

 

Budding; adj. Having to do with new or developing circumstances or abilities.

I am a budding trapeze artist and I am excited for my first circus performance.
Burgeoning; adj. Growing or developing; blossoming or flourishing.

My burgeoning clothing business is very special to me.
Embryonic; adj. Of or belonging to an embryo; early beginning; not yet formed or matured; rudimentary.

The bird died in its embryonic stage while still in the egg.
Fledgling; adj. New or immature; not yet out of the nest; not experienced; rudimentary.

The fledging baby bird longed to fly away.
Incipient; adj. Beginning to exist or appear; early in developmental stage.

My building plans are still in their incipient stage.
Initiate; n, v. Noun: One who is being or has been initiated; one who has been introduced to or has attained knowledge in a particular field.

Verb: To begin or start a process; to get things going.

The initiate met the visitors at the door, ready to initiate them into the world of art.
Innovation; n. The act of introducing something or someone; something newly introduced.

My innovation is so creative I cannot wait to show my team at work.
Nascent; adj. Coming into existence, emerging.

I have several nascent ideas that might work in the future of my business.

Have you ever read a book in which the vocabulary was so elevated you could barely understand what was going on?  I have and I wanted to quit on the second page.  Learn these words and that is less likely to happen.

• Dearth; n. A scarcity or lack of supply.
• During the war, there was a dearth of food storage.

 

• Diminutive; adj. Very small; tiny. (Diminutive is occasionally used as a noun. It refers to anything that is small or the name given to suffixes on words that indicate smallness. For example, the suffix let is a diminutive. When it is added to a noun, it indicates a smaller version of that noun, such as a booklet or starlet.)
• She is a diminutive baby, weighing only 4 pounds.

 

• Infinitesimal; adj. Immeasurably or incalculably small.
• I never thought we’d be able to study the infinitesimal nucleus of an atom, but with new technology, we can.

 

• Insignificant; adj. Of little importance or power.
• My problems seem insignificant when compared to others.

• Small and not important.
• The scratch on the paint was insignificant and the owner of the house didn’t make us repaint it.

 

• Lilliputian; n, adj. Noun: A very tiny person or thing.
• Compared to the tall basketball player, the children were Lilliputians.

• Adjective: Small or trivial in size.
• The Lilliputian house was perfect for the small family.

• Not important; petty.
• The discussion was Lilliputian in the midst of the emergency.

 

• Meager; adj. Scarce in quantity or extent; in short supply.
• After camping for two weeks, we had a meager supply of food.

• Deficient in richness or fertility.
• The soil was meager and so the crops barely grew.

 

• Minuscule; adj, n. Adjective: Extremely tiny; very small.
• She used a minuscule amount of frosting on the cake so as to not overpower the people who ate it.

• Noun: Small, ancient, cursive script.
• The minuscule writing was hard for me to read.

• Lowercase letters.
• A term for lowercase letters is minuscule.

 

• Minute; adj. Exceptionally small or insignificant.
• The way he looked at me seemed minute but my friends told me it was significant.

• Characterized by precise and close scrutiny.
• I did a minute inspection to make sure they had cleaned properly.

 

• Mite; n. A very small sum of money.
• To a widow, a mite may seem like unto a large sum of money to others who have more.

• A very small creature or object.
• The small child was a mite compared to the big football players.

 

• Negligible; adj. Not considered important enough to be worth bothering about; insignificant.
• The problem was negligible to me, but to the woman next to me it seemed to be important enough for her to cry about.

 

• Scintilla; n. A minute amount; barely a suggestion; just an inkling or a spark.
• For a moment I had a scintilla of hope that he loved me, but then I came back to reality.

 

• Trifling; adj. Of trivial or nonsensical importance; not important and easily dismissed.
• His trifling plan was impossible to make a reality.

 

• Trivial; adj. Of little significance or importance; concerned with trivia or inconsequential information; commonplace.
• I know many trivial facts but I blank on the important ones.

 

• Ample; adj. Of a large or great size; fully significant, even more than enough.
• There is an ample amount of love for you here.

 

• Behemoth; n. Something that is enormous in size and/or power.
• The giant was a behemoth that terrorized all the towns nearby.

 

• Colossal; adj. So enormous or gigantic that it seems to defy belief.
• The colossal monument blew me away.

 

• Copious; adj. Containing or yielding plenty; bountiful in amount or manner.
• I have a copious amount of corn from the harvest.

 

• Gargantuan; adj. Of enormous size, quantity, or volume or capacity.
• I thought I’d never climb the gargantuan cliff leading to the path.

 

• Humongous; adj. Gigantic or extremely oversized.
• I was so hungry I ate the humongous pizza.

 

• Immeasurable; adj. So vast or limitless in size that measurement is not possible.
• My love for him is immeasurable.

 

• Incalculable; adj. Impossible or too great to be calculated or resolved.
• Incalculable damage came after the hurricane.

 

• Infinite; adj. immeasurably great or large; having no limits or boundaries.
• The teacher displayed infinite patience even though the students were rude and restless.

Okay, our goal at PrivateTutoringAtHome.com is to help parents, students, and tutors alike be super successful. We know many of you are shaking in your boots as you prepare for the ACT and SAT and GED and GMAT and LSAT, and any other acronym standardized test you can think of.

So, in honor of the standardized test, we’ll be posting 1 question and answer this whole month and the focus will be on critical reasoning. Deal? Good. So join us daily for some seriously yummy critical reasoning buffet.

Critical Reasoning Question 1

In Los Angeles, a political candidate who buys saturation radio advertising will get maximum name recognition.

The statement above logically conveys which of the following?

A. Radio advertising is the most important factor in political campaigns in Los Angeles.

B. Maximum name recognition in Los Angeles will help a candidate to win a higher percentage of votes cast in the city.

C. Saturation radio advertising reaches every demographically distinct sector of the voting population in Los Angeles.

D. For maximum name recognition a candidate need not spend on media channels other than radio advertising.

E. A candidate’s record of achievement in the Los Angeles area will do little to affect his or her name recognition there.

Think you know the answer?

The correct answer is D. An L.A. political candidate who buys saturation radio advertising will get maximum name recognition. In other words, such advertising is sufficient for maximum name recognition. If so, then is must be true that, as (D) says, a candidate can get such recognition without spending on other forms of media.

(A) suggests that radio advertising is the most important factor in L.A. political campaigns, but nothing like this was mentioned in the stimulus, so it’s not something that you can infer. Nor were we told the specific results of attaining a maximum name recognition, so (B) is out. Similarly, we don’t know precisely what is meant by “saturation radio advertising,” so we can’t infer anything as detailed as (C). Finally, although we know saturation radio advertising is sufficient for getting maximum name recognition, we can’t infer that other things, such as candidate’s record mentioned in (E), have little effect on name recognition.

When I answered this question, I thought the answer was either B or C. Knowing both these answers were incorrect, helps me to understand that I need to work on assuming details not given.