Synonymy Discrimination Of Teaching Chinese As A Second Language

Synonymy discrimination is an essential and difficult part in the vocabulary teaching of TeachingChinese as a Second Language. Although many statements and researches have been made, the results are notcomplicated yet. In this paper, the writer found that some words are not synonymy in Chinese, the foreignstudents would take them as synonymy by misunderstanding. For example, Xinlai and Xinnian. Thedifference of culture and customs is also the obstacle for discriminating synonymy. For example in Chinesechuan and Dai are synonymy, corresponded in English there is only a word” wear”. For these reasons, thestudy of synonymy discrimination is necessary.This paper focused on analysing the synonymy used in the teaching material Boya Chinese whichpublished by Beijing University Press. First part is the summary of the results has been raised about theChinese synonymy and the definition of synonymy in the TCSL. The author thought the definition ofsynonymy should be broad. That is to say, the synonymy which need to be distinguished are not only thesynonymy taught in class. Because the foreign students are active, the synonymy discrimination shouldinclude all the words that the students have difficulty in distinguishing or understanding, ignoring theirsyllables and gender. In the following parts, the author has illustrated the detailed reasons for the difficulty insynonymy discrimination from five aspects—the class teaching, culture of mother language, traits ofsynonymy, similarity of the gender. Then it has anlysed the difference between the synonymy in meaning,grammar, usage etc. The author has also emphasized other things about the culture difference in the TCSL.When making cultural interpretation, Chinese teachers could take advantage of the positive transformationbetween cultures to make the foreign students have a deeper understanding of the synonymy. Vise versa, theantonym is also helpful. In a word, this paper aims to provide some useful guidance to the synonymy teachingduring the TCSL.