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Introductory Article
Click
here for 3 Minute Intro Video
This Education Breakthrough May Never
Reach the Public.
Improve vocabulary, literacy, and comprehension. It
will be proven in this Website that about the largest problem in education,
the largest damager of education, is students not knowing what the words
mean. This information will point the way for you to have a more
successful education and a more successful life.
What is the practical way to know what more words
mean? Breakthrough U.S. Patent Number 4,813,710 gives an improved book
dictionary that will be used more adequately because it is much easier to
use. Find a word not with the usual 6 – 7 page turns, but with only 2 – 3
page turns. Here is an inexpensive priority program to help all subjects of
study. Directions for use are in two videos listed after this article on
the home page.
Illustration for U.S. Patent No.
4,813,710
If a student is reading words to understand a
lesson, would it help the student to know what those words mean?
Definitely, because understanding what the words mean is about the most
basic necessity in education.
Hundreds of studies have demonstrated that college
students’ performance correlates closely with their vocabulary scores. What
this means is that students with very good vocabularies often get A's and
B's. Students with very poor vocabularies often get D's and F's. These
hundreds of studies are proof how important it is to know the words.
What happens when one word in a sentence is not
understood? The whole sentence can become confused, not understood, or
misunderstood. When you look up a word in a dictionary and learn its
meaning – and then go back to the sentence that had that word – do you find
that the overall meaning of the sentence suddenly jumps into focus?
Apart from those outside hundreds of studies, a person
can have a personal proof on the importance of knowing the words. This
personal proof can be based solely on the fact that after looking up a not
known word, when going back to its sentence, about every time the
person goes "Oh, now I understand that sentence."
Even if someone dreamed up thousands of pages of
mistaken theorizing claiming it is not important to know the words, you
could ignore that theorizing – – if you recognize that looking up that one
word made it possible to understand the whole sentence.
One misunderstood word gives an incorrect meaning to
a sentence.
Choose any sentence and change any word, and you can
notice how the sentence changes. If a student interpreted the wrong meaning
for one word in a sentence, that student would misunderstand what that
sentence was saying.
Later sentences are often based on and require an
earlier sentence be understood. One not understood word confusing that
first sentence is often the beginning of a cancer of confusion in many
following sentences. Not knowing what the words mean all by itself can make
an education fail – as also demonstrated by those hundreds of studies.
About the most important
requirement in education is to know what the words mean. But this
requirement is broadly ignored. Students are broadly not looking up the
words. Not knowing what the words mean is about the largest crippler of
comprehension and learning.
About the first thing that
should be done to improve education is to get the words better known. This
Website includes two other articles that more broadly prove the importance
of knowing what the words mean, found on the home page soon after the two
videos.
Students inadequately using
dictionaries.
While reading, many students come across new words and
make vague guesses. Many do not look up the words because they think that
is too much effort. They do not want to make the 6 or 7 page turns in an
ordinary book dictionary to find each word. They keep on reading, and they
get confused. Why not make book dictionaries easier to use so that
students become more willing to look the words up?
An easier-to-use
dictionary
Alexander Weilgart has invented an improved book
dictionary, where words are usually found with only 2 or 3 page turns.
While yellow page phone books often have large printed black marks on page
edges showing where to find the first letter of any word, why not also have
smaller printed black marks on page edges to show where to find the second
letter of each word? On March 21, 1989 United States Patent No. 4,813,710
on Dictionary Index was granted.
The best way to see how this improved dictionary
works is to look at the fun 3-minute video listed next on this Website's
home page. Next, there is also a longer video with more examples, that
also shows how this invention works on dictionaries with thumb indexing.
[click on photo if you wish to download
picture for printing in magazine etc...] This later 16-minute video also shows how to put this
Index on a dictionary of your own, if you do not want to wait to buy one.
If you use this idea for free on your own dictionary, you must do the legal
requirement of writing "U.S. Patent Number 4,813,710" on that, so that
people will know this is patented.
After these two videos on the home page, you will find
“Written Directions” where you can see how this works without a video.
People usually find the written directions more complicated to understand
than the videos. Seeing the fun 3-minute video, people often say “Wow, that
is really simple. How come it took over a hundred years to invent this much
easier-to-use dictionary?”
A breakthrough
over all previous dictionary indexes.
This Dictionary Index has only one chart of
letters and is a breakthrough over all previous dictionary indexes, all of
which had basically twenty-six separate charts. There are about 30
such previous patents just in the United States, with many more patents in
other countries.
Having only one chart and not 26 separate charts to
search through, this Index is less complicated to deal with. This Index
also locates words with fewer page turns. This Index also costs much less,
mainly splashing a little extra ink on page edges for its long and short
printed marks.
After over a hundred years of many inventors all over
the world trying, objectively speaking, here finally is a practical
dictionary index. If you want more details on this, elsewhere on this
Website is the article titled "Proof: This is the Only Practical
Easier-to-Use Dictionary."
This improved book
dictionary is easier to use and more fun to use, with less fumbling around
to find any word. This improved dictionary would be used more willingly
and more often. This is a major advance in dictionaries, to help a
major problem in education. This can be even faster than a computer, where
a person has to wait to turn on and set that up for dictionary use, or walk
over to where that computer may be.
Top priority program to help education.
Of all the different ways
to help education, this inexpensive improvement largely becomes top
priority. Here is a way to improve education in all subjects, for
all students, in every city of the country, and at low
cost.
Very seldom do substantial
inventions come along that will help education. This is the largest advance
in dictionaries in 100 years. This will help students accurately understand
the lessons in the first place. This will improve literacy, help avoid
wasted years where students comprehend little, and help avoid expensive
tutorials and remedial programs if students later try to catch up.
Many people regard that
they use a dictionary adequately. Many people would buy this improved
dictionary if only for convenience, and then be surprised to find that they
are using this dictionary even three or four times as often, and better
understanding their lessons.
This invention could have
been invented 100 years ago, in that no modern technology was needed to
invent it. FINALLY we have the solution to an easier-to-use
dictionary, which can help solve a major problem in education. It now
behooves us to use this invention to help solve our education problem.
What other programs are
there that will increase willingness to use a dictionary? This program is
one-of-a-kind, nothing else out there like it. This is the only practical
easier-to-use book dictionary. This will help education more per dollar
spent than almost any other program.
A Survey.
Would you prefer to have
one of these easier-to-use dictionaries?
In a survey, 87.5% preferred this improved
dictionary for convenience alone – not even yet considering how this would
help education, what with this dictionary being used more often and more
adequately. Where selling to only 1% of the public would make a book a best
seller, this would likely be a gargantuan best seller.
Dictionary companies like to be known as caring about
education. And dictionary companies as business people must care about
income. We have a mystery here. With so many dictionary companies written
to, why is no dictionary company bringing this to you?
Dictionary people told
Weilgart no one was demanding a faster, more convenient dictionary.
“Imagine what would happen if you offered the public an $800 car,” Weilgart
responds. “They aren’t demanding it because they don’t think it’s
possible.” With this Website the “secret” of this invention is broken.
With the public finally learning about this improved dictionary, the public
will be able to demand it.
If this improved dictionary is not published before the
patent expires in about four years, there would be less marketing advantage
ever to publish this. This must be published soon, or it may never be
published.
The inventor Alexander Weilgart is also executive
director of the nonprofit corporation Comprehension Project, Inc., which has
its main purpose to bring this improved dictionary to the public. When no
dictionary company would publish this as a profit activity on its own, it
fell to this nonprofit corporation to get enough donations to buy a
complete edition of about 20,000 of these improved dictionaries.
Comprehension Project, Inc.’s first plan was to pay a dictionary company to
publish one of its own dictionaries, but with the change that this Index
would be included.
Federal and California state governments approved
this nonprofit corporation as not having conflict of interest, as being a
way to help education with this improved dictionary even if dictionary
companies would not publish this.
Twice Weilgart wrote to
about 200 foundations that help education but received no donation. With
foundations supporting so many other programs, some rather ineffective or
theoretical in nature, somehow they missed supporting this down-to-earth
practical program.
Alexander Weilgart sees one basic last chance to bring
this aid to education. Alexander Weilgart invites people to request
dictionary companies to publish this on their own. Please see the last
Website article “Contacting Dictionary Companies” for names, addresses,
E-mail, etc. of dictionary companies. With yours and other’s requests,
dictionary companies will recognize there IS a demand for this.
Also, a tax-deductible contribution would help cover
expenses, of this nonprofit corporation doing its part to bring this
improved dictionary to the public. Even small contributions of $10 or $20
can help. Donations can be mailed to Comprehension Project, Inc., 2337
Harrison Street, Oakland, CA 94612. Or on this Website under “Donations”
you could use a credit card to make a donation.
An alternative plan to buy a complete edition of this
improved dictionary is presented in the Website article “Advance Ordering
Dictionaries.” In this plan you, school systems, government agencies, and
book stores can place advance orders for this improved dictionary.
Copyright © 2002
Alexander Weilgart
All Rights Reserved
For a more "printer friendly" version of
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(Please see “Why a Successful Education and Life
REQUIRES the Education Requirement Part 1” and “Education Requirement Part 2” and “Education
Requirement Part 3” for more information and
proof how you can improve your education and your life by more adequately
knowing what the words mean. Please see comments at the end of that Part 1
for automatic permissions to copy any of this Website’s materials.)
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