Vocab List 1: Miscellaneous SAT words you should know

1. Vocab List 1: Miscellaneous SAT words you should know 1. Brevity (n)- conciseness (gets to the point) in speech or writing {with brevity} 2. Pithy (adj)- brief but full of meaning; short but sweet   3. Taciturn (adj)- silentdue to unhappiness or bitterness with a situation 4. Bombastic (adj)- pompous, showy way; describes one who speaks in a way to impress others 5. Colloquial (adj)- describes common everyday speech; conversational; informal; perhaps even a specific dialect 6. Digress (v)- to stray from the subject being spoken about; go off on a tangent 7. Loquacious (adj)- very talkative 8. Rhetorical (adj)- relating to speech that is used to persuade 9. Insolent (adj)- boldly disrespectful; rude 10. Narcissistic (adj)- self-adoring; egotistical; superior [Myth of Narcissus] 11. Pretentious (adj)- describes one who has or pretends to have an extreme sense of importance 12. Vernacular (n) – the language or dialect of a specific population or subject area

2. Vocab Activity 1.1 • Write a sentence with each of the words from List #1 that relates to something you read in English 9 or 10. • Choices: Lord of the Flies, Antigone, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Romeo and Juliet, any short stories you remember, etc. • Try to make your sentence as specific as possible… Example with #1: In Of Mice and Men, George wants Lennie to speak with brevity so no one could tell he was mentally challenged.

3. Vocab Activity 1.2 (HW) Create a story about ONE of the following topics using all of the words from List #1. • Summer vacation • Going on a first date • A bedtime story

4. Summer vacation story Summer is always short but sweet, and I will try to make this story pithy to match. Probably the coolest thing I did this summer was go to Israel. Our Israeli tour guide tended to digress a lot when speaking, but she was very likable and her tangents were enjoyable. It turns out one of our American tour guides went to the same college as me, but he turned out to be pretentious, insolent, and bombastic. He made us sing and clap along to a certain song every morning on the bus, which ended up being funny as well as corny, but other than that he would get in people’s business and make lots of overly intrusive comments. The vernacular in Israel is Hebrew, but most people we met knew English at least on a colloquial level. There was one crazy girl who was usually loquacious, except one day she got stuck under the bus in the luggage compartment for about thirty minutes, after which she was quite taciturn. On other days, she would tell us stories about being in the psychiatric ward, and unfortunately those stories were not told with brevity. One guy constantly walked around with his shirt off, which probably seems narcissistic, but he didn’t mean to be – it was about 110 degrees there. A lot of people think trips to Israel are going to be filled with rhetoric about religion and politics, but that wasn’t the case with mine. It was informative and fun.

5. Vocab List 1 Parts of Speech 1. Brevity (n) 2. Pithy (adj) pithily (adv), pithiness (n) 3. Taciturn (adj) taciturnly (adv), taciturnity (n) 4. Bombastic (adj) bombastically (adv), bombast (n) 5. Colloquial (adj) colloquially (adv), colloquialism (n) 6. Digress (v) digression (n) 7. Loquacious (adj) loquaciously (adv), loquaciousness (n) 8. Rhetorical (adj) rhetorically (adv), rhetoric (n) 9. Insolent (adj) insolently (adv), insolence (n) 10. Narcissistic (adj) narcissistically (adv), narcissism (n), narcissist (n) 11. Pretentious (adj) pretentiously (adv), pretentiousness (n), pretense (n) 12. Vernacular (n)

6. Vocab Activity 1.3 Write one of the following types of letters using all of the words from List #1. They may be addressed to someone real or fictional. • Love letter • Hate/break-up letter • Letter of complaint (to a restaurant, store, any type of business or service) • Letter of resignation (to a boss about a job, to a coach about a team, etc.) *Try to use different parts of speech for each vocab word, not just the version of the word that is on the original list.

7. Letter of Complaint Dear Target, Forgive me if I speak colloquially here, but the instructions you provide for how to put different pieces of furniture together suck. They contain far too much brevity. When I was putting together a bookcase I purchased from your store, it took me six hours because your vernacular regarding the different components of the bookcase was unclear. I became taciturn during the process (though I’m normally loquacious) because it was so difficult, though I eventually prevailed. The instructions could certainly be amended to be pithy as opposed to too brief. Not to digress, but oftentimes I find your employees to speak quite bombastically. I don’t think they are insolent, but they seem to be a bit narcissistic about working at Target, which is kind of weird. I mean, it’s not exactly a dream career. I hope you don’t find this letter pretentious. I mainly just wanted to address you rhetorically about the importance of proper instructions for assembly of furniture for the good of all your future customers.