Memorize Korean SAT (Suneung) English Words With Games
2026-06-28 · Vocab Learning
Vocabulary carries the English section of Korea's college entrance exam (μλ₯). Cloze, grammar and reading all come down to knowing the word. Yet grinding a word list front to back collapses for most students partway through, for two plain reasons: it is dull, and it never asks you to retrieve anything.
Why exam words do not stick
Reading a list is passive. It feels like knowing, and then the word will not surface under time pressure. What builds recall is producing the word from memory.
Cognitive psychology calls the difference the testing effect: being tested on material, even when you get it wrong, leaves far more behind than rereading the same material. Getting it wrong first is part of why it works.
That is exactly what a word game does β it forces retrieval every round and shows you the answer when you miss. Same five minutes, different amount retained.
A three-step routine
- Meet the word. Play a round of High School mode, whose pool is 103 words drawn from the vocabulary that recurs in μλ₯ and SAT passages.
- Understand it. The definition, example and synonyms appear the moment the round ends. Spending one minute here is the whole point: a word you were trying to solve lands differently from a row in a table.
- Review it. Missed words collect in My Words. Come back days later, then weeks later β the gap is what does the work, not the evening you learned it.
What is actually in the high-school pool
Ten of the 103, with the definitions the game shows after a round:
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ABIDE | To endure without yielding; to withstand |
| ADEPT | Well skilled; thoroughly proficient |
| ALLAY | To put at rest; to pacify or quell |
| AMEND | To correct; to put right |
| AVERT | To ward off or prevent |
| BLUNT | Plain and unceremonious in address |
| BRISK | Full of liveliness and quickness |
| CHASM | A deep rift or gap; an abyss |
| CRAVE | To long or yearn for |
| DREAD | Fearful apprehension of danger |
All five letters. Exam vocabulary is rarely hard because the words are obscure; it is hard because they sit in the state where you recognise them and cannot produce them.
The same pool, three ways
Those 103 words also run in anagram and hangman, and the three formats train different things.
- Tile guessing is recognition β narrow the field from colour clues.
- Anagram is production β you have to build the word from loose letters, which needs the spelling exactly.
- Hangman is letter intuition β a feel for which letters carry information.
Writing tasks fail on the second one: read it and you know it, write it and you cannot. Time spent on anagram closes that gap fastest.
Five minutes a day
Open with the Daily Challenge and give the word profile a minute afterwards. On a longer day, add two or three rounds of High School mode.
How many words a day is reasonable is covered in the daily plan, and the top 100 SAT words has a 30-day schedule.
Review is where the marks are
A word met once is a word you will lose. Spacing the misses out of My Words is what turns "I think I have seen this" into "I know what this means".
The wider approach is in the word game guide.