Written by Nina, UCLA MA; Former Teaching Fellow, Harvard University; and author of 20 textbooks

Everything starts with language, and words represent the most basic component — the starting point of language. I'd like you to answer this question without looking it up.

How many words do you think there are in the English language?

a.  200,000

b.  90,000

c.  500,000

d.  1,000,000

If you said 1,000,000, you're correct. English ranks as one of the most extensive languages in the world.

Here's another important question.  Does anyone know every word of English?

No. Even the most intelligent professor of English can't know 1,000,000 words.

So, when we take a test like the SAT or ACT, we could easily encounter unknown words. Of course, practice materials include words they guess will be on the tests, but with 1,000,000 words, how many hits can they have? What can we do?

What if I told you that words contain lots of clues to their meanings. These clues function almost as stories, if we know what to look for.

Step 1 — Many people studied Latin and Greek root words in school, but if you haven't, you should, and even if you have, read on. 

Our words are like a giant jigsaw puzzle.  Why? Many languages influenced English because of the history of the English people. When a cultural group clashed with the English people through a battle or whatever motivated their proximity, words from that foreign language entered English. If that culture had an invention or concept that English didn't have up to that point, the foreign culture's word for that new component became part of English.

Here's the bad news. About half of all English words come from foreign languages.

Here's the good news. For us to have a tool that acts as a hack, we need a through line.  The commonality that serves as a tool  or through line began with the Roman Empire, or more specifically, the Latin and Greek languages. Over time, more and more Latin entered the English language. 

Rather than looking at a word as one whole, we can often sift out the "story" of an unfamiliar word by looking at it in pieces and applying a simple technique.

Step 2 — Words were formed by frame of reference. When you reveal the frame of reference, you reveal the "story" within the word and can understand the word more deeply.

What's "frame of reference"? Simply, when a new concept or idea appeared, it needed a word to name it. Whoever chose that word had to apply the closest connection in the known world to the new concept.

Take, for example, some of the words and expressions that people coin to talk about technology.

What's the story or frame of reference for "AI -- artificial intelligence"?  In 1956, John McCarthy, a Dartmouth professor, named AI using the very positive reverential word "intelligence" as part of this expression, but the connection to "intelligence" resided in the natural gifting to humans of the ability to think. An equal part of the story of this concept lies in the word, "artificial". Many people connote that "artificial" isn't as high quality as what nature bestows. The expression "artificial intelligence" leaves us with a story that includes the positive and the possible negative.

When the personal computer first became popular, Jean Polly, a librarian, wrote an article about how to use the Internet called "Surfing the Internet: An Introduction". The phrase coined for looking up information, "surfing the Internet", did just as much to popularize the PC as any marketing campaign.  Why? Because of the story within the chosen words.  "Surfing" was considered cool, and the inclusion of it in the phrase "surfing the Internet" suggested that even people who could never surf in real life, could be as cool as a surfer by getting on the Internet. Imagine if she had entitled her article, "Looking Up Information on the Internet". Does that make you want to plunk down tons of money for a computer and open files?

Step 3 — Looking at the "pieces" of words to learn the deeper frame of reference "story"

Words can be divided into prefixes, suffixes, and root words. Words don't have to have all of these parts, and remember, almost half of English words come from Latin and Greek, but that means that half don't.  Nevertheless, because so many words have these origins, this technique represents the strongest hack we have. 

Let's look at the simple word, "aviation".  Please follow the steps below.

1.  Break the word into pieces.

        avia + tion

2.  Define each piece.

        avia (bird) + tion (noun)

3.  Dig into the pieces to uncover the story.

Often, the suffix tells us the part of speech. Why is that important? If we don't know the word, we're at 0% comprehension. If we know the word is a noun, we know a noun is a person, place, or thing. In this example, that represents 50% of the word.

Words will always appear in a context. No one walks up to someone and says, "aviation". There's a context. If we know even one piece of the word along with the context, we can often figure out enough of the word to understand the sentence.

"Avia" means "bird".  We talked about frame of reference. People name new concepts based on their knowledge of the current world and how they understand the new concept's place. We can imagine someone looking at the new invention of the airplane and applying what he or she knew in the current world that most closely aligned with an airplane. It's logical that "bird" came to mind because both airplanes and birds fly.

If you've already studied Latin and Greek root words, I'd suggest reviewing them if you're planning to take a standardized test. I'd also suggest reading articles in different subject areas -- business, education, health, science, international, etc. For words you don't know in these articles, break them into pieces and try to uncover the "story".  Time.com is an excellent source of articles in many different subject areas.

Remember that standardized tests help predict how well you'll do at a university. This kind of vocabulary preparation will help you get a better score on the tests, but also, it will help you in your future classes.