It has come to my attention that words a student misunderstands and looks up can yet remain troublesome. And that R6 materials are suffering from the same fate when meter activity lessens.

It's this way: The student runs across a word he or she doesn't understand. He or she looks it up in a dictionary, finds a substitute word and uses that.

Of course the first word is still misunderstood and remains a bother.

Example: (Line in text) "The size was Gargantuan." Student looks up Gargantuan, finds "Like Gargantua, huge. " Student uses "huge" as a synonym and reads the text line "The size was 'huge'. " A short while later is found still incapable of understanding the paragraph below "Gargantuan" in the text. Conclusion the student makes — "Well it doesn't work. "

The principle is that one goes dull after passing over a word one does not understand and brightens up the moment he spots the word that wasn't grasped. In actual fact, the brightening up occurs whether one defines the word or not.

But to put another word in the place of the existing word, whether in Level 0 or Level VI is to mess it all up.

Take the above example. "Huge" is not "Gargantuan". These are synonyms. The sentence is "The size was Gargantuan. " The sentence was not "The size was huge. " You can't really substitute one word for another at Level 0 or Level VI and get anything but an alteration. So something remains not understood at Level 0 and the meter stops at Level VI. It just isn't what was said or thought.

The correct procedure is to look over, get defined well and understand the word that was used.

In this case the word was "Gargantuan". Very well, what's that? It means "Like Gargantua" according to the dictionary.

Who or what was Gargantua? The dictionary says it was the name of a gigantic King in a book written by the author Rabelais. Cheers, the student thinks, the sentence meant "The size was a gigantic king. " Oops! That's the same goof again, like "huge". But we're nearer.

So what to do? Use Gargantuan in a few sentences you make up and bingo! You suddenly understand the word that was used.

Now you read it right. "The size was Gargantuan. " And what does that mean? It means "The size was Gargantuan. " And nothing else.

Get it?

There's no hope for it mate. You'll have to learn real English, not the 600 word basic English of the college kid, in which a few synonyms are substituted for all the big words.

And as an "aside" (like they use on the stage), may I say that golly some people have to reach a long way to find goofs.

(The data in this HCO B was given to me by Mary Sue Hubbard and called to attention by Ian Tampion.)