Ollie the Elephant — Learning Made Easy™

About the Ollie the Elephant — Learning Made Easy™ Series

Failure to learn the meanings of key common words is a major barrier to learning any language with understanding.

Up to fifty percent of the average English sentence consists of what we refer to as simple words.  These are words like “and,” “at,”  “in,” “to,” and so on.  If one were to remove only five of these words from one’s vocabulary one would find it difficult to put together most proper sentences.

The Ollie the Elephant — Learning Made Easy: English Basic Words series is designed to create understanding and literacy in a language.

One of these “simple” words, such as the word “to,” has ten distinctly different meanings and uses that are commonly used.  Other simple words have many different widely used meanings.  Correct knowledge of these words helps form a foundation of literacy and understanding of the English language.

This factor is overlooked in many schools, language-learning programs, and English grammar courses.  Confusion about these common words can lead to a child or adult failing in his studies.  If one cannot easily understand what one is reading or hearing, learning becomes difficult.

The secret lies in the illustrations.  Every single one of the illustrations is designed to convey a specific meaning.

To demonstrate this, let’s look at bigger words like “airport” and “airplane.”  These two words are easy to teach and learn.  They each have one basic meaning.  There is nothing difficult about this.  But now let’s look at a word like “in.”  This word has twelve different common meanings!  Depending on how one uses the word in a sentence, the definition can change completely.  Failure to learn the meanings of key common words is a major barrier to learning any language with understanding.

As this primary step has been almost completely overlooked in language studies, in education, and in schools, one should not be surprised that many children and adults dislike or have difficulties with reading.

The Ollie the Elephant series was specifically designed to convey the meanings of these fundamental words using pictures.  These are not storybooks.  They teach the proper use of the key common words of the English language.  Adults are often shocked that even they learn new things from Ollie the Elephant.  The series is designed to give a university-level understanding of key English words to even first-grade students.  The secret lies in the illustrations.  Every single one of the illustrations is designed to convey a specific meaning.  This method enables a child to learn complex English, simply and rapidly.

The Ollie the Elephant — Learning Made Easy: English Basic Words series is laid out in an exact sequence.

It consists of a compilation of many smaller booklets, in a series of modules, along with workbooks containing checksheets, exercises, and drills.  Each booklet contains one definition of a simple word.  There are, for example, five booklets for the word “at.”  Each booklet covers a different meaning of the word “at.”  There are three booklets for the word “and,” to cover each of the meanings of “and,” and so on.  After reading each booklet one does an exercise to improve understanding.  After studying all of the booklets for one word, a series of drills and exercises is undertaken to move an individual toward super-literacy.

How to Use Ollie the Elephant – Learning Made Easy 

The booklets can be studied alone or with a tutor, but they are best studied with a study partner.  Depending on the setting, the partner can be any of the following:

1. a parent
2. a tutor, teacher, or instructor
3. another student

The entire purpose of this Ollie the Elephant series is to create understanding in the mind of the student.  It is not a reading test.