I want to begin by telling you that the vocabulary portion of the SAT may be the most important one on the entire exam. Because the new SAT is now adaptative, these questions will determine the level of difficulty of the next set of questions. Studying for the vocabulary portion doesn't mean you need to memorize every word in the mother tongue; although, I can help you do that, too. What this portion requires to master it is a few strategies that will help you eliminate almost all other answer options and determine the correct word. Those are the strategies listed below. You can also find these and more high-value SAT test-taking strategies in The Complete Guide to SAT Reading by Erica Meltzer, linked here. This is, hands down, with no other close contestants, the best and possibly only SAT test-prep book you'll ever need. I've purchased and used them all from the College Board's to Princeton's, and in my 1500-hour online tutoring career, I'm telling you, this is the book that you want. It contains a question-by-question review by a long-time Manhattan SAT tutor and expert. For each question type, you'll see a host of strategies, examples, focused exercises to practice applying them along with detailed answer feedback. You can also book sessions with me for my 12-course complete course on the SAT, featuring all strategies; custom, auto-graded homework using the 3500-question educator's bank by the College Board with unlimited SAT questions categorically labled by difficulty, skill, and question category. But first, check out the free strategies below that gauranteed to improve your score on the verbal reasoning section, and thank you for coming to this page! 

Strategy #1: Play positive and negative. If the word in the sentence is saying something positive, then, you're answer will also be positive, and vice versa for negative statements.

Strategy #2: Focus on conjunctions and transitions. Contradictors, for example, imply you need the opposite idea as a specific sentence, continuer transitions like and, also, as well as, etc., mean the author is continuing his or her idea, telling you exactly the kind of word you need to choose, almost giving you the answer his or herself. 

Strategy #3: Use your knowledge of foreign languages. A good bulk of the English language is made up of loanwords, so utilizing that Spanish or French class you took last year, could very much help you. 

Strategy #4: Use roots and affixes to determine the meaning of unknown words. You can also think of other words that have the same parts and what they mean. The prefix qualifies the meaning carried in the root. The suffix in a word changes its part of speech: adjective, noun, adverb, etc. 

Strategy 5: Watch out for double-meaning words like "fluid." The SAT creators love to challenge students with these, and you very well may see one on the test. Be sure to consider all possible definitions or meanings of a word before eliminating it.

Strategy 6: Don't eliminate an answer just because it looks funny and, likewise, don't select one because it looks fancy. There are built-in traps for students who attempt a shortcut, and the creators know what they're doing.