Why a Successful Education and Life
REQUIRES  the Adequate Use of Dictionaries. 
(Part 1)

It is important to look up not understood words that are encountered while studying, whether those words are read or heard.  So why don’t some students look up the words?  Because they dislike going to that effort. 

Similarly, more people call “Information” for a phone number than use a telephone book, even with that cost per call, often when a telephone book is right there – – because they do not like to look up alphabetical entries the regular way. 

Any claim that no one minds looking up words is proved false by the fact of so many not understood words.  Any presumption that everyone already knows the words is proved false just from the Reader’s Digest quote at the start of this article.  Those hundreds of studies show that many students do not know the words.  Vocabulary is a major problem and cause of much education failure.

The fact of so many not understood words shows that many people do mind using dictionaries.  Or else many more of these words would be understood.

The first two references in this article demonstrate that having a good vocabulary tends to mean a successful education and a successful life. 

Using a dictionary more adequately is not something that is confined to any “elite.”  Regardless of whatever ethnic, racial, poverty, or cultural background any student has, each student has the opportunity and liberty to look up not understood words and so improve his or her education and life.

However much any teacher encourages a student to look up not understood words, it is finally for the student to decide to do this on his or her own, to improve the student’s education and life.  Whatever any teacher says, it is still each student who has the responsibility to look up the words.  After all, it is the student who knows each time a not understood word is passed by.  A teacher can not be expected at each moment to read a student’s mind and come rushing over to tell the student to look up that word.

There is no way around this education necessity.  Looking up words is a minor expense of being able to understand the lessons.

After your education years are over, not knowing what words here and there mean can harm your life.  On the job being vague and confused, not understanding and making errors, tends to get one fired.  In the private areas of personal happiness, self-esteem, and developing a personal philosophy – it is not helpful to go through life being confused and misunderstanding what is going on.  Education is not only to serve one’s finances, and the personal areas of education are also served by knowing what the words mean. 

Not knowing what words mean is about the largest problem in education, causing about the most damage in education.  This is about the largest crippler of comprehension there is.

We do not need to look for some new intellectual and fancy theory why so many educations and careers fail.  Overlooking the fundamental requirement to know what words mean all by itself can destroy an education and a career.  True, there are other factors that are important for a successful education.  But knowing what the words mean is about the most basic and important of all education requirements, and too often this is being broadly ignored.

If you can not understand a sentence, you may have to look earlier.

You may come across a sentence that you just can not understand, where you know all the words in that sentence.  It may surprise you if you look and find a word that you did not know two pages earlier.  You may notice that you never understood very well anything you read from that earlier sentence on.  Looking up that word and rereading from that earlier sentence on, you may be surprised that when you arrive at that sentence two pages later, that finally you can understand the later sentence.

Misunderstanding one word on page 2 of a book would at least somewhat change the meaning of that word’s sentence, and quite possibly also the meaning of many following sentences.  That cancer could carry all the way through the rest of that book.  Sometimes not understanding just one word can cause large devastation.

There may also be 50 or 100 other cancers that got started throughout the rest of that book – – from 50 or 100 other words along the way that also were not understood.

A student at the end of a course – instead of having a crisp, nonconflicting view of that course – can have a mishmash of vague, conflicting, confused and not understood thoughts on the subject.

When a student gets a C or a D on a final exam, not understanding some words along the way could account for all of that.  If that student had looked up 50 or 100 words along the way – maybe an extra five hours or so for that whole course – that student might have got an A.

That student might have precisely understood that whole course – with no vagueness, confusion, reservations about what was going on – if he had merely looked up some more words.

The author who wrote that class’s textbook probably had a clean, nonconflicting view of that subject.  That author wanted to pass along his clean, unconflicted understanding to that student.  But if the student is not going to cooperate by knowing what the words mean, that author can not be held responsible for the mishmash C or D level of understanding that can easily result.

It is not such a complete mystery why our education system is failing.  Lots of new research looking for fancy new theories-of-the-month is not necessarily needed.  Merely not knowing what the words mean, all by itself, can make an education fail.

Some theorists can have all kinds of theories of what is harming education, but may not include among those this major harmer of education.  When will this major problem in education stop being ignored, in preference for trying to find fancy new theories-of-the-month?

Two ways to approach a problem is to provide a solution or a band-aid.  A band-aid allows a problem to continue, but tries to reduce the problem.  A solution gets rid of the problem.

For instance, one band-aid is to provide expensive tutorials to students, who after years of not looking up hundreds or thousands of words, may be generally and broadly confused about one or all subjects of study.  A solution to avoid that problem in the first place, is for each student to look up each not understood word when originally encountered.

A large part of the problem of inadequate dictionary use is students disliking the difficulty of using ordinary dictionaries.  This improved dictionary, U.S. Patent No. 4,813,710, is the best answer to making book dictionaries easier to use.  This improved dictionary will make it easier for you to have a successful education and a successful life.

This improved dictionary is actually faster and more convenient than a tabletop computer dictionary – if a person has to walk one or two rooms away where that computer may be, or has to wait a minute or two to turn on that computer and set it up for dictionary use.  This can be as fast as one of those about 4 by 6 inch portable computer dictionaries, where that tiny and hard-to-use keyboard takes extra time – and besides, that tiny screen requires the inconvenience of scrolling up and down to see the rest of the definition.  This improved book dictionary is also much more affordable than the two computers just mentioned or a laptop computer.

A successful education and life (as proved by the references at the start of this article) requires the adequate use of dictionaries.

This improved dictionary will be used more willingly, more often, and more adequately.  This is the only practical way to make the chore of looking up words in a book dictionary much easier to do.

This improved dictionary will make it much easier for you to have a successful education and a successful life.

This improved dictionary has not yet been published, and may never be published.  Your help is needed.

Publishing this improved dictionary would much help education while making large income for dictionary companies.  But no dictionary company yet in the first thirteen years of this patent has published this dictionary. 

You could write to dictionary companies and request that they do what would help society’s education and their own pocketbook, saying that you would prefer this easier-to-use dictionary. Please see the last Website article “Contacting Dictionary Companies” for names, addresses, E-mail addresses, etc.”

You can refer to two of the other articles on this Website, titled “Are Dictionary Companies Helping Enough?” and “Emergency.  This must be published SOON.”  These two articles will tell you why this improved dictionary may never be published, unless you in the public request/demand  that at least one dictionary company does the right thing.

(There is another article “Education Requirement, Part 2” following this article that will give you more information how to improve your education and your life.