learning a new word and the antonym at same time

[suMMit]

A bit of a pet peeve. I just started a lesson that teaches 优点 yōu diǎn "advantage"and 缺点 quē diǎn "disadvantage" as 生词 new vocabulary words. I personally find this irritating and confusing.

 

This happened to me with 薄 báo thin and 厚 hòu thick and a year later I still struggle to remember which is which. Even after searching for and reading texts with these words, I still pause before knowing which is which. My best mnemonic has been 芝加哥的比萨很厚 Chicago pizza is thick. 

 

To me it makes much more sense to introduce the word for "advantage" , use it until it becomes a known word and then teach "disadvantage". (keep in mind I have not come across 优 or 缺 yet either). 

 

[Jan Finster]

2 hours ago, suMMit said:

To me it makes much more sense to introduce the word for "advantage" , use it until it becomes a known word and then teach "disadvantage". (keep in mind I have not come across 优 or 缺 yet either). 

 

 I would disagree. Antonyms are an opportunity to group vocabulary into related pairs, which should facilitate learning. It is not inconceivable that you talk about advantages vs disadvantages of XYZ in a text or about thin vs  thick walls that make a room noisy or quiet...

I guess the challenge is that in China there are no low hanging fruit where you can just infer the meaning from your mother language. 

[mungouk]

3 hours ago, suMMit said:

I just started a lesson that teaches 优点 yōu diǎn "advantage"and quē diǎn "disadvantage" as 生词 new vocabulary words.

[...]

(keep in mind I have not come across 优 or 缺 yet either). 

Well 优 and 缺 are right there in front of 点 which you already know.  And so these are actually the "生词" (点 isn't new).

 

I think it makes a lot of sense to introduce these together since discussing the good points and bad points of something needs both senses.

 

优 means excellent, superior and from it we get words which have a positive sense, like: 

优秀   yōu xiù       outstanding; excellent
优点   yōu diǎn    merit; benefit; strong point; advantage

优势   yōu shì    superiority; dominance; advantage

优惠   yōu huì    privilege; favorable (terms); preferential (treatment); discount (price)

whereas 缺  means deficiency; lack; scarce; vacant post; to run short of, and from that follow words which are about a lack or shortcoming:

 

缺点    quē diǎn    weak point; fault; shortcoming; disadvantage

缺少    quē shǎo    lack; shortage of; shortfall; to be short (of); to lack

缺乏    quē fá    to lack; to be short of; lack; shortage
缺口    缺口    quē kǒu    nick; jag; gap; shortfall

Once you know 缺 it would be easy to infer the meaning of 缺少， and probably 短缺、 无缺 etc.
 

[suMMit]

Perhaps advantage / disadvantage is a bad example. Because, yeah we often use them at the same time. We'll see in a month if Ive kept them straight. 

 

My opinion on opposites like Thick / thin, hard/ soft, full/empty, simple /complicated etc still stands. I'd rather learn one, and later the other. In fact when I learn an new word if my teacher immediately teaches me the opposite, I simply ignore it. Goes to show we all learn differently. 

[mungouk]

Well, that's the thing... you still have to learn them.

 

I remember being confused by them when I first met them too, and it's frustrating if you recall the wrong one because you can easily embarrass yourself. 

 

There's possibly an argument for learning vocabulary grouped by "root" meaning as listed above, but a syllabus like HSK starts with higher-frequency words and moves towards lower frequency, which means a lot of synonyms start to appear in the lessons... I joke with my teacher "do we REALLY need yet another word for 'but'...?"

 

[Sreeni]

4 hours ago, suMMit said:

. (keep in mind I have not come across 优 or 缺 yet either). 

I brake down the word into components. So when you read 优点, it should already had covered 优 and 缺点 must have covered 缺. Then might be your confusion goes. Mungkok explained clearly, hope that helps. Generally I will not go to the other words which contain 优, 缺 as it will slow down the reading of the passage.

[Mandarincave]

优点 and 缺点 are tricky.  If your pain point is difficult to differentiate them but you know their pinyin, not sure if this works for you.  I make a twist to link '缺点 quē diǎn' to the word 'disadvantage' while '优点 yōu diǎn' to the word 'merit'.

 

Then I link up d of 'disadvantage' comes before m of 'merit' in alphabetical order and q of 'quē diǎn 缺点' comes before y of 'yōu diǎn 优点'.

 

Similarly, I link up thin to the word 'centimeter' and thick to the word 'meter'. 

 

Then I link up c of 'centimeter' comes before m of 'meter' in alphabetical order and b of 'báo 薄' comes before h of 'hòu 厚' 

 

 

[suMMit]

So actually I haven't even done this lesson yet, I have only previewed it and noticed  优点 and 缺点, have never come across 优 / 缺 or their pinyin. I'm just anticipating(it might end up clicking immediately) it could be confusing based on heaving learned synonyms or antonyms, or "similar" words at the exact same time. This has happened with thick / thin, 安装/装修, 其他/别的, and others. 

 

But it never happens when I learn a word, have it down to some degree , and then learn the synonyms, antonyms, related words. I remember learning 长 well before 短， 高  before 矮, and have never confused those. Just some simple examples, there are many more. 

 

@Mandarincave those are interesting ideas

 

[suMMit]

So, just as a follow up, I did this lesson this morning with a teacher and had zero issue with these words - in spite of or because of this thread.

 

[Guest realmayo]

"Neurons that fire together wire together" - so by learning two related words at the same time, in theory you will be more likely to mix them: learn 优 and 缺 at the same time and you'll be training your brain to remember both of them as either gain or lack, hope I remember this time, now which one is it?

 

Best avoided.

 

I learned 左 and 右 at the same time, meaning I unfortunately learned them as one is left and one is right and went on to waste a lot of time thinking which is 工 and which is 口? for writing, and which is 3rd tone and which is 4th tone? when speaking.

 

[mungouk]

Interesting... is this based on a particular theory or is it speculation?

 

Plenty of people don't know left from right in their mother tongue... quality and quantity and many other pairs are easily mixed up as well.

缺 is easy because it sounds similar to 却 — one of The Many Buts — which gave me a hint as to the negative aspect when I was learning it.

左 / 右 also took me a while. Eventually I hit on "the one with 工 is for the left-wing workers".  For me, learning tones just means hearing native speaker audio over and over again.

We all have our own ways of working around these things I guess. 

[Guest realmayo]

Based on (a) a theory that I don't understand very well about how neurons in the brain build memories and (b) personal experience that either/or or opposite-type vocabularly learning has generally been very unproductive for me. Yes you can definitely come up with good ways to remember the differences between words that you always seem to confuse, but it's best to avoid creating that confusion in the brain in the first place.

 

I think the more general point is to beware of the downside of repetition: the first 5 times you see 优 and the first 5 times you see 缺, if each time you're saying "is this good or is this lack", then you've trained your brain to query whether 优 means good or lack, and you've trained your brain to query whether 缺 means good or lack. So the next time you see 优 your brain won't give you the meaning, it'll give you the question. I also believe the physical connections in your brain between your memory of the two characters will be very strongly linked together.