Yes, you can go holiday shopping and build your child’s vocabulary --  all at the same time. Mary E. Curtis, a professor of education and director at Lesley University and Ann Marie Longo, an associate professor of education at Goucher College, have put this practice to the test.  These scholars proclaim that board and argue that they can build a child’s vocabulary and pave the w ay for better comprehension skills. We agree.

Board games are the perfect way for teachers and parents to introduce new vocabulary words to students.  Games such as Taboo, Password, Jeopardy, and Scattergoriesactually allow you to customize the games with you own vocabulary word lists.  The more vocabulary you introduce to your child, the more opportunity he has to improve his reading comprehension skills.

Our KnowledgePoints instructors have added more board games to the holiday shopping list. Apples to Apples, Apples to Apples Junior, Crosswords, Scrabble, Upwords, Bananagrams, Blurt!, Sight Words Bingo, and Wordplay for Kidsall made the cut.  Even video games such as Leap Frog, MyWordCoach, MySATCoach, Are you Smarter than a 5 ^th Grader?, and Book Wormwere added to the teachers’ shopping list this year.

All of these board games are enriched with new vocabulary terms.  Not only will your child be happy at play during the holiday season, you may also see an increase in your student’s grades.

Think Tutoring offers reading comprehension tutoring programs for students of all grade levels, delivered by highly qualified, state-certified teachers.  We serve students from Florham Park, Madison, Chatham, Whippany, East Hanover, Morristown and other surrounding towns. Call 973-593-0050to learn more about how we can help build your child's vocabulary.

The SAT contains many questions that test a student's knowledge of  correct word usage. For example, many people use "compliment" when they really want "complement." Not knowing which word is the right one to use may lower your child's score on this section of the SAT.  Use lists below to improve your child's SAT Prep .

Our local language tutors at Knowledge Points know that our language contains 6,000 "lookalike words." But we focus here on the ones most frequent misused.

Have your child take the following test. Count as "wrong" any answers that were guesses.

1.   The speaker's presentation (implied, inferred) that we have a "do-nothing" Congress.

2.   Based on the statistics he presented, I (implied, inferred) that the threat is real.

3.   The fog will no doubt (envelop, envelope) the town this evening.

4.   His retirement had quite an (affect, effect) on staff morale.

5.   He went (past, passed) the exit because he’d been thinking about his tax audit.

6.   Were you (affected/effected) by the storm?

7.   Sociopaths are often described as having a "flat" (affect, effect).

8.   Houdini was a great (allusionist, illusionist).

9.   Her (allusions, illusions) to her former boss were often acerbic.

10. Albany is the (capital, capitol) of New York.

If she did not get a perfect score, be sure your child reviews the tips that follow. Discuss them. And, take full advantage of blogs like Pam Nelson's ( blogs.newsobserver.com/grammar/home ) to help your child understand the differences among words that sound and look alike. (In a recent post, she explores the difference between "trustee" and "trusty."

 Answers

1. implied (TIP: Speakers imply; listeners infer, based on what the speaker said.)

2. inferred (TIP: The person heard a speaker talk about statistics and the person inferred or reached a conclusion.)

3. envelop (TIP: An "envelope" is used with a letter and both words have several e's in them.)

4. effect (TIP: The noun "effect" means a result or outcome. The other noun, "affect," means a psychological state and is clearly not the correct meaning for this sentence.)

5. past (TIP: "Past" can be a noun, meaning the opposite of the future.

Or, it can be a preposition, as it is here. Prepositions, you'll remember, introduce a group of words [the "prepositional phrase," the last word of which is a noun. Here, the phrase is "past the exit," with "exit" serving as the noun.)

6.  affected (TIP: The verb is this sentence is either "affected" or "effected."

Typically, only people with considerable power can effect a change. Things, on the other hand, can cause a certain [but not drastic] outcome or impact. The "storms" here are things, not people with power. And the storms definitely have an impact.

7. affect (TIP: see tip #4.)

8. illusionist (TIP: An "illusion" is an impression and an "illusionist," one who creates an impression.)

9. allusions (TIP: To "allude" means "to refer to." "Allusions," then, are references.

10. capital (TIP: The only tip "capitol" spelled with an "o" is the word meaning a government building. A further tip: think about that building. Invariably, it will have a dome, which is roughly the shape of an "o.")

KnowledgePoints provides premier, curriculum-based SAT Prep at our center in Florham Park, and serving students throughout Morris County, including Madison, Morristown, Chatham, Whippany and East Hanover.