STUDY PACK	17
short while later is found still incapable of understanding the paragraph below "Gargantua" in the text. Conclusion the student makes— "Well, it doesn't work."
The principie is that one goes duli after passing over a word one does not understand and brightens up the mornent 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 is to mess it ali 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 and get anything but an alteration. So something remains not understood.
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 sarne 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 coliege kid, in which a few synonyms are substituted for ali the big words.