Do you like teacher to compare synonym?

[vera_zxl]

I'm a Chinese learning podcast host. I used to produce a lot of programs about synonym such as '增长‘ VS ’增加‘. But recently I read a paper by a famous Chinese professor. She suggest teachers not do that in classroom. It's better to just explain when and how to use one word than compare two words. I'm a little bit confused and want some suggestions from learners. Do you think tha's helpful or just causes more confusion?

[Shelley]

I would have be on the side of no, I would find it confusing to have both mentioned at the same time.

 

This doesn't mean not teach it at all but I would like it be done so that the first word YY is taught thoroughly and when it is considered that the students understand the first word introduce the second word XX with something along the lines of word XX's meaning/use is similar to word YY . But then teach XX independently and then recap at the end of the lesson the fact that they are synonyms.

 

This is because I have learned that all though synonyms are similar in meaning their use can subtly change the meaning of a sentence. They are not always necessarily completely interchangeable.

 

I would also like a gap between the two words so not consecutive lessons. But not to big a gap or i may struggle to remember the first one

 

This is from a students point of view. I am not a teacher so this may be wrong from a trained teachers point of view.

[anonymoose]

I think it depends on the explanation. With a good and clear explanation, it would be useful. But otherwise not.

[li3wei1]

I think at the early stages, you don't need more than one way to say something, so just focus on the way that you're teaching, and don't confuse the student. But in the later stages, when the student knows how to say that, at some point you have to introduce other ways of saying it, explain how they're different, when they are used, etc.

[French]

It depends where you're at level wise. I often ask for synonyms to have a smoother speech mainly because I'm quite comfortable speaking/understanding Chinese.

If you're a beginner, might be best to stick to just one set of words.

[grawrt]

I'm taking a class like this right now. I think it's very helpful but maybe because most of us already know the synonyms but just aren't sure when it's appropriate to use one over the other. This is an upper-intermediate class so I think for beginners it wouldn't be very useful.

[vera_zxl]

Thank you guys! Your answers are very helpful. I think we still need some of these to help students figure out the difference when they are in the higher level and already learnt both of them.

[hedwards]

I'm definitely on the side of no at the early stages. Students do need to know the words eventually, but I think that if you know one word for something and how to ask for synonyms that will be sufficient in most cases. Eventually, knowing the synonyms is important, but early on, I think it's too much.

 

On the other hand, it is vitally important that students know how to ask for synonyms as there's no assurance that the other person is going to know what words you know. I had that problem in class a lot where the students would know fairly complicated words, but fail to know the simpler words. I'd get tripped up by it all the time as I'd be using simple words only to find that they didn't understand those, but did understand less common and more complex ones.

 

In English there's a great site http://visuwords.com/ , but I don't think such a site exists for Chinese.