Simple Words
It would be natural to assume that the big or the technical words are those most misunderstood. 
Oddly enough this is not the case.

In Word Clearing and in check-outs it has been proven statistically, that the small and simple words show up more frequently. Misunderstanding the simple words is the most common cause in preventing understanding.

It is often the small  simple words that are  misunderstood. They are     often best cleared up with    a grammar textbook.

Words like "a", "the", "exist", "such" and other 'everybody knows' words show up much more often, when doing Word Clearing with a Meter, than the big and difficult ones.

It takes a big dictionary, or often a grammar textbook, to define these simple words fully. Apparently the small dictionaries also suppose everybody knows.

We run into well educated people, who have been through years of formal education, who do not know what "or" or "by" or "an" means. At first glance this may seem unbelievable. But the proof is in metered Word Clearing. When these small words are fully cleared up a whole education can go from a solid mass of question marks to clear and useful information. Stupidity comes about as a result of misunderstood words.

Early Misunderstoods     are the key to later ones.

The earliest misunderstood word or words in a subject are the key to later misunderstood words in that subject.

Then come words like "a", "the" and other simple English words as the next type of words that most often turn up.

In studying a foreign language it is often found that the grammar words of one’s own language that tell about the grammar are basic to not being able to learn the foreign language and its parts.

The test of whether the person understands a word is "does it read on the Meter when he reads the word in the material being cleared?"

That a person says he knows the meaning is not acceptable. Have him look it up no matter how simple the word is.

Grammar
Many small words are best looked up in a grammar. Many of these words are first and foremost grammatical words.

Only very few dictionaries have full definitions for such words, but often then they have no examples.

Words like "a" "the" "and" are really parts of language-construction and are more complex than they seem.

A simple grammar book should be at hand in any course room and in any Word Clearing session.

The best grammar textbooks are those made for persons studying English as a foreign language. The point is, they don't suppose that the student already 'knows all that'.

When picking a grammar textbook, make sure it uses lots of examples when explaining things.

If a student is very ignorant or 'stupid' about  grammar it is best to make him do a whole simple grammar text first before he begins to get into just words. Without the grammar the words won’t hang together for him.

It is quicker to do a short grammar course than to struggle with grammatical misunderstoods throughout study.

"Gargantuan"	"Huge"

Synonyms
Sometimes words a student misunderstands and looks up can remain troublesome. This is due to not clearing the word fully, but only using a synonym: The student runs across a word he doesn’t understand. He looks it up in a dictionary, finds a substitute word and uses that. Of course the first word is still misunderstood and is left there not understood.

Example: The student is reading, "the size was Gargantuan." He looks up Gargantuan. The dictionary says,  "Like Gargantua, huge." Student uses "huge" as a synonym and reads the text line "The size was ‘huge’". He reads on but is still unable to understand the paragraph below "the size was Gargantuan".

 The student thinks to himself, "Well it doesn’t work. The theory said the student goes blank after passing a word he does not have a definition for and brightens up again the moment he spots the word that wasn’t understood". The brightening up actually happens as a result of spotting the word whether one defines the word or not. One then has the word looked up and cleared before going on. But to put another word in the place of the existing word won't do. In the 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 and is still there and causing trouble.

Make Sentences
The correct procedure is to get the actual word used in the text defined well and fully understood. In this case the word was "Gargantuan". 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 French author, Rabelais. Oh, the student now thinks, the sentence means "The size was a gigantic king." That’s the same error again, using a substitute. But it is closer. The thing to do is to use 'Gargantuan' in a few sentences.  Suddenly the student understands the word itself  that was used. When he reads,  "the size was Gargantuan" he knows what it means. It means "The size was Gargantuan", and nothing else.