Merriam-Webster's Vocabulary Builder

Rating:
Summary: How To Double Your Vocabulary
Review: Despite advertising hype, no ONE book will double your vocabulary, but reading several vocabulary-building books can double your vocabulary. Different vocabulary-building books have different words and different explanations. If you don't learn a word from one book, you can learn it from another book.

Any vocabulary-building book will have many words, a fourth to half the book, that you already understand. You can always skip or skim the easy-to-you words.

Varied, incomplete word selection is another reason for using several books. Some books just take words used on past-standardized tests, neglecting other words. Other books, limit their words to words based on word roots, neglecting others. Often authors have thrown in personal favorite words, even if others rarely use the words. If you see a word in two or three books, it's generally a need-to-know word.

The only weakness of Merriam Webster's Vocabulary Builder, and no book is perfect, is that the word selection is limited to words based on word roots. I have not seen the CD version noted by other reviewers and my review applies only the paperback. The price is great.

Other Books: Cartoon/Mnemonic vocabulary books have their fans who like the mnemonic memory aids, which are useful before tests. But with only one word and one cartoon per page, these books may only have a few hundred words and are expensive per word. Audio vocabulary books such as Elite Word Power, let you hearing each word pronounced correctly, helpful for improving speaking vocabulary.

Rating:
Summary: Vocabulary Builder by Webster
Review: This book is perfect to begin a disciplined program to increase
your vocabulary for academic or business reasons. A beauty of
the presentation is that it contains a sample quiz to verify
progress at major juncture points. Thousands of intermediary
to complex words are defined in simple terms. Here is a sample
of the vocabulary contained in the work:

o rect- straight
o triptych- carving
paradigm- example of how to do something

This work would be helpful for academics, as well as scientists,
journalists, students and a whole host of others. This would
make a good purchase for the student in your house.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This is an excellent book. There are thousands of words that you will see and read everyday. there're quizzes to test progress your english. There is an example for every word you learn inside for you to understand easily. I always carry this book everywhere I go. this book teach the most useful of the classical word building roots to help me continue expanding my vocabulary in the future.

Rating:
Summary: Good or bad, depending on who you are--
Review: This is one of those books that will or will not work for you depending on who you are. If you're trying to study for an all-important standardized test, then this book will be perfect for you. If, however, you're just a regular Joe Shmoe just wanting to expand his everyday speaking vocabulary, then this book will be a flop. There are just too many words introduced in this book that have no practical use in normal life. "Coeval's" a nice word, but who's going to use this in typical conversation?

Another problem is the way the book is organized. It's done so in terms of "latin roots." Let's face it-- sometimes this strategy works, but sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's better to group words in a "practical sense"-- like in Funk's book where he divides words according to their function (like descriptions of personalities; names of medical professions, etc.). Introducing people to new words using latin roots will only be helpful to people who first know what the latin roots mean. But what if you don't? Must you first learn all the latin roots first before you learn what lycanthropy means? That's just too much work for some people who just want to polish up their vocabulary a little. I suggest that if you are, in fact, just a regular person who's only trying to fill up the gaps in his vocabulary, that you check out Funk's classic, more practical vocabulary building book. Otherwise, don't bother with this one.

Rating:
Summary: Painless way to learn
Review: This is something that can be read from cover to cover. It lacks the boring humdrum that most other Vocabulary building books inevitably contain. Author Mary Wood Cornog uses a very successful method; she defines, in understandable language, Latin roots that make up most of the English language. Knowing these Latin roots simplifies the English language to an undescribable degree.With self-tests at the end of each section, this book is also interactive. I was surprised at how many words I understood after reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: No upgrade for the CD-ROM
Review: Two thumbs up for this little nugget. Definitions are presented in a clear and precise manner and followed up by exercises after the end of each eight word chunk. The end of each section tests from the all the words presented in the section. If you're looking for an easy and fun way to bone up on your vocabulary skills, this is the one.