Research On Chinese Near-Synonym Acquisition And Learning Strategies Of Intermediate And Advanced Foreign Students

The near-synonymy is a group of words that contains the same or similar meanings. The large number and variety is one of the characteristics in Chinese vocabulary. In the field of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages, near-synonymy is always a big problem in Chinese vocabulary learning among international students with intermediate and advanced level. Currently, the domestic research is focused on the near-synonyms acquisition in the realm of Teaching English as the Second Language, while there is little near-synonyms research on the second language acquisition of Chinese. In addition, the research method of quantitative analysis based on experiments has not been effective utilized in the academic range. The study of Chinese near-synonyms is usually concentrated on certain near-synonyms as an example whereas little attention has been paid to the general framework and learning strategies of Chinese near-synonyms, which could not reflect the overall status of differentiating and analyzing near-synonyms among international students with intermediate and advanced level. Therefore, this thesis presents the study of "Research on Chinese Near-Synonyms Acquisition and Learning Strategies of Intermediate and Advanced Foreign Students", in order to undergo some effective study on near-synonyms acquisition and learning strategies.Through the methodology of questionnaires and individual interviews, as well as the data analysis of SPSS 17.0 software, an attempt to extract both quantitative and qualitative research materials from the international students with intermediate and advanced level in Nanjing University, truly reflecting the use of Chinese near-synonym acquisition and learning strategies among international students. The thesis also compares similarities and differences between western and eastern students in using near-synonyms and their learning strategies, analyzing the relevance between near-synonyms acquisition and learning strategies, due to conclude a description and summary of the rules and inspirations from the research.Based on previous studies, combined with the needs of the research, the near-synonyms are divided into three criteria, including semantic comparison, syntactic contrast and pragmatic comparison. Plus, the vocabulary learning strategies can be extracted to three categories too:meta-cognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social affective strategies. Via statistical analysis of the collected data, the thesis’s findings are as follows:(1) There are different levels for the near-synonyms acquisition, featuring as easy in syntactic learning and hard in pragmatic learning. International students acquire syntactic difference first, then acquire implicit semantic difference; (2) Western and eastern students with different language backgrounds exist disparate performance in near-synonyms acquisition. Generally speaking, Japanese and Korean students are better than European and American students, probably because of the influence of mother tongue transfer; (3) In learning strategies, Japanese and Korean students tend to use imagery strategy while European and American students prefer to use vocabulary knowledge strategy; (4) The near-synonyms acquisition has a low level connection with the specific learning strategies using by the international students, which means there is no obvious omnipotent learning strategies in distinguishing near-synonyms acquisition. However, negative learning attitude and strategies will have a certain influence in learning levels.At last, through the quantitative and qualitative analysis between near-synonyms acquisition and learning strategies in international students with intermediate and advanced level, proposals are put forward for near-synonyms teaching and learning in Chinese as a second language. It is hoped that this research can enrich the empirical study of the development of Chinese vocabulary, especially in the certain field of near-synonyms.