Jensen's Vocabualry vs. Amsco

[carol]

I've seen Amso a lot recently.

Is it latin/greek based?

How does it compare to Jensen's Vocabulry or

is there a better program.

 

Carol

[Cinder]

I have no experience or familiarity w/Jensen's but my ds started Vocab for the High School Student this year. I would not say it's Latin/Greek *based* but it does cover those elements. The first section is about learning words from the context. Then Anglo-Saxon prefixes are covered, followed by Latin prefixes, Latin roots and Greek word elements. Exercises include identifying synomyms and antonyms, word analogies, and composition (a short sentence or two showing you understand the word meanings). The exercises are pretty painless (except for the analogies, according to ds). We will take 2 years to complete this book.

 

HTH

Cinder

[Beth in Central TX]

I've been working through Jensen's Vocabulary on my own this year to better educate myself. It has 54 lessons broken up as follows:

 

Basic Roots for Latin I (Lessons 1-18)

Basic Roots for Latin II (Lessons 1-18)

Basic Roots for Greek (Lessons 1-18)

 

I follow the format under the "Tips and Hints" section which outlines a schedule to do one lesson per week. There are 4 parts to each lesson, and Friday is a test day. I don't give myself a test though; it's one of the advantages of being the teacher and the student.

 

The Day 1 exercise has you match definitions and words by looking only at the roots, prefixes, and suffixes for clues. The Day 2 exercise has you find the root in each vocabulary word and write the meaning. The Day 3 exercise has you find the word represented by the meanings of the roots & affixes. The Day 4 exercise has you fill in the blank by using context clues in the sentences.

 

I think that my vocabulary has expanded since I've been doing the Jensen's Vocabulary workbook. I can definitely make a more educated guess at what a word means now. I have not seen the AMSCO product, so I can't compare the two.

 

HTH!

[vmsurbat]

They are both good programs but differ in style and fell.

 

You received a good description of Jensen's Grammar from a previous poster.

 

Amsco vocabulary is a series--we've used two of the series, the 9th grade text (name escapes me now) and the Vocabulary for the College Bound.

 

Amsco's text has several chapters and tackles vocabulary from many different angles. The 9th grade text was too easy for my eldest daughter, so I switched her to Jensen's which was much more challenging and she enjoyed it. She would often come to me with vocab. words that she found in her readings.

 

For my next oldest daughter, I used Vocab. for the College-Bound. (It was cheaper). I thought that was a very good text--there is a significant portion dealing with Latin/Greek-based words, but also many others (foreign, by context, and more).

 

Jensen's is strictly root-based and works on "figuring out the meanings". You do a page a day, test on Friday (if you want). Like all Jensen's products (and I use a lot of them), it is very straight-forward and no frills.

 

Amsco works with roots plus many other aspects of words in its exercises (synonyms, antonyms, shades of meaning), etc. It is not laid out in such a straight-forward manner--I had to make up a schedule for my daughter to use it. I still think Vocab. for the College-Bound is a good place to begin if your child already has a good vocabulary (meaning skip the younger grades)....

 

HTH,