How to prep for the SAT while taking a shower

Or on your iPod, or by reading a comic book. Preparation can be easy – but is it worthwhile?

By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the July 12, 2007 edition

Page 1 of 4

Teens who plan to prep for college-admissions tests this summer can find a plethora of ways to make it fun and flexible.

Want to study in the shower? Lose yourself in a comic book? Take a quiz on your iPod? Or how about rocking out to some songs that stretch the lyrics just a tad in order to be educational?

Test-prep giant Kaplan has paired up with publisher TOKYOPOP to offer a series of manga novels (Japanese-style comics). Released earlier this month, each of three popular stories was rewritten to include more than 300 words commonly tested on the SAT and ACT. (Cost: $9.99.)

"Van Von Hunter" stars a raven-haired hero who vanquishes evil in the land of Dikay. In just the first few pages, you'll find words like "inviolable," "nefarious," and "subvert." Underlined words are de­­fined in a box on the same page.

"By having the combination of the visual story and the words popping out on the page, students can ... really retain the words, versus just memorizing a list," says Kristen Campbell, Kaplan's national director of SAT and ACT programs in New York. With librarians and even classroom teachers tapping into this popular genre, she says, it made sense to add it to the test-prep options.

With iPods becoming ubiquitous, last month Kaplan started offering downloads to prep for the reading, math, and writing portions of the tests (at $4.99 each). The audio/video segments include strategy sessions and customizable quizzes.

If you'd rather stick to more entertaining options for your ears, plenty of music CDs can make those tough-to-remember definitions sink in.

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next Page