How to teach synonymous words

 The Distinctive Usages of ‘Examine’, ‘Explore’, ‘Investigate’

English language is known as the abundance of synonyms. As an English teacher, it is required to introduce students on how to treat and learn synonymous words. The grade transition from beginner to advance is much relied on the acquisition of word knnwledge. The beginner students have limited vocabulary either on word recollection or knowledge. Most teachers treat synonymous words as identical words both in meaning and usage. This merely means for practicality. At the first stage, such decision can be accepted, but later it will confine students.

Having knowledge of word usage is more important than word meaning. On the basis of this, treating synonyms by looking into the usage is helpful to discriminate the word usage within the synonymous meaning.  The following is my example on how to discriminate the synonymous verbs (‘examine’, ‘explore’, and ‘investigate’) by using concordance – word string analysis.

The results of my study shows that ‘examine’, which has more various meanings, is frequently used by speakers for whom English is their first language. On the other words, speakers whose English is not their first language but as foreign language rarely use the verb, they prefer using ‘investigate’, which only has 2 senses. This means that words that are very polysemous verbs are considered difficult to understand and even to use.

The difference uses of ‘examine’, ‘explore’, and ‘investigate’ based on my corpus study shows:

-          Here, ‘examine’ implies the meaning of evaluation, as in the following corpus:

1. This article uses quantitative and qualitative data to examine the relationship between aspiration, social class, and attainment. Boudon’s theory of secondary effects is considered together with Bourdieu’s influential ‘value’ theory of social and educational reproduction. (Educational Practice and Theory, 14/2001). àIt finds good/significant relationship.

2. …that one can only examine whether and to what extent cognitive representation is changed when stringent criteria are used to assess the effect of training. (Educational Practice and Theory, 15/1996).

3. We conducted a second investigation to examine learning outcomes on the basis of users' perceptions of CELP utility, CELP satisfaction, affective reaction to CELP and the actual CELP usage (UGE)… The second investigation identified potential factors that contributed to the differences in UGE between two groups of high-INT learners. (British Journal of Education Technology, B/2009)

- ‘explore’ means to find out the best among other components/things being searched, as in:

1. In this paper we explore the relationship between learning gains, measured through pre-assessment and post-assessment, and engagement in scientific argumentation. (International Journal of Science Education, 72/2008). à It finds the best relationships among others.

2. This paper presents two South African case studies designed to explore the influence of subject matter knowledge on pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).(International Journal of Science Education, 72/2008).

3. This study aims to explore these attitudes in secondary education… we found four interpretable clusters representing different groups of students. (International Journal of Science Education, 35/2  2007).

- ‘investigate’ has a meaning of finding something unknown before, as in:

1. The purpose of this study was to investigate Korean children's environmental literacy levels and the variables that affect their environmental literacy…. it was found that gender, parents' school background, and the source from where students obtain environmental information affect all categories of environmental literacy. (International Journal of Science Education, 35/2  2007). à The unknown aspects are gender, parents' school background, and the source.

2. The purpose was to investigate how teaching a year-long curriculum using SSI affects science learning outcomes. (International Journal of Science Education, 63/2009).

3. ... to investigate the relationship between task-types and mother tongue use. (ELT, 61(1-2)/2008).

Easy and engaging activities in a reading class

Having a reading skill is much emphasized during school times. Students are expected to master skills relating to reading. In this global era, anyone has equal chances to grab the world, but it requires skills which are much related to the ability of decoding information in the form of printed or written resources. Because of this, being good and strategic readers will bring great benefit to them. They can move faster and farther ahead. As a teacher, however, it is not an easy job to do. Many teachers have difficulties in teaching reading. Most students are reluctant to participate in reading class. They get bored easily in a reading class for they have seen the activities monotonously.

It is true that a reading class is very potential to rise up problems since most teachers are trapped with the reading media which are in the form of textbook and any other written sources. This will bring to the activities focusing on answering questions and doing many worksheets, which have been the favorite activities in the reading class but turn down students’ interest and engagement.   

The following activities are worth trying to begin engaging and easy ways:

1.  Pre-reading activities

a)      Show several pictures to students relating to a topic of reading subject and ask them to provide words or sentences about the pictures.

b)      Make one or more simple sentences about a topic, but not too many or complex that will stimulate students responds. Drive them to explore everything that will reveal any important information relating to the topic.

c)       Ask students to list words, verbs, nouns, adjectives or phrases as many as possible relating to a topic.

d)      Ask students to write or say something about what they expect or like and dislike about a topic.

e)      Provide an animal or human picture with enough space to put sentences in the head for the subject and the body (neck to feet) for the predicates of sentences.

2. While-reading activities

a)      Give students charts or tables relating to a topic and ask them to complete or fill.

b)      Spot some mistakes or irrelevant information in a text and ask students to identify and then make some corrections.

c)       Provide main ideas as many as paragraphs and ask students to match, or do the other way around.

d)      Do the activity like “pairing up word”. To do this, you just delete verbs, nouns or adjectives which have strong collocation with the words and ask students to guess what the appropriate words to put in given gaps.

e)      Ask students to make some logical connections by drawing circle and straight lines to connect a word or phrase in each sentence.

3. Post-reading

a)      Ask students to rewrite the text by modifying some words or phrases or sentences as they like. For example, they might change “One day” into “In a beautiful morning”, and so on.

b)      Ask students to paraphrase or make a different form of the original sentence since they think it has a unique form in comparison with their native language sentence form  and find out whether it is  acceptable or not.

c)       Ask students to find other texts whose topics are similar and ask them to list the similar words, phrases or values among the texts.

d)      And ask them which text they think better and why.

e)      Ask students to guess what texts are trying to say, the writer’s purpose of writing the text.