Word/Semantic Relationships Teaching vocabulary is about how words relate to other words. The most effective way to teach vocabulary is to show how new words relate to words that students already know. It is important to explicitly teach the relationships between words. Here are the major types of semantic relationships: Semantic Explanation Examples Teaching Ideas Relationship Categories Words can be categorised into groups Fruit Banana, Apple, Brainstorm members of —> (fruits, emotions, buildings) Watermelon categories (who can think of types of vehicles?) Some categories belong to larger Categorise vocabulary as Emotions Sadness Joy —> categories (e.g. is a subcategory they are learnt (run fruit skip glide Anger of food), and some category members prance are all ways of can be their own categories (subtypes moving) of apples are Granny Smith, Golden Anger furiousness angst Visualise how words belong —> Delicious) to categories and how they can branch off into subcategories. For example: Antonyms A pair of words with opposite fast/slow Teach antonyms in pairs, to meanings provide a reciprocal big/small understanding of a concept right/wrong Encourage students to guess Antonyms can be gradable (on a sleep/wake what the antonym of words continuum, e.g. are (e.g. go/come, do/undo, hot/cold), complementary (one or the wife/husband quietly/loudly) other, e.g. alive/dead) parent/child or relational (e.g. doctor/patient, When adding words to predator/prey) personal dictionaries, encourage students to make note of any antonyms Synonyms Words that have the same or similar fair/just/objective/ Brainstorm synonyms to meaning to each other. impartial/unbiased explore how words are related to others Replace repeated or Some words will have multiple leap/spring/bound/hop/ overused words in writing. meanings (homonyms) so they may bounce Ask students to identify have different sets of synonyms overused words, and replace depending on the sense of the word them with more interesting debate/discuss/confer synonyms about/talk over/talk
Word/Semantic Relationships Teaching vocabulary is about how words relate to other words. The most effective way to teach vocabulary is to show how new words relate to words that students already know. It is important to explicitly teach the relationships between words. Here are the major types of semantic relationships: Semantic Relationship Explanation Examples Teaching Ideas Categories Words can be categorised into groups (fruits, emotions, buildings) Some categories belong to larger categories (e.g. fruit is a subcategory of food), and some category members can be their own categories (subtypes of apples are Granny Smith, Golden Delicious) Fruit —> Banana, Apple, Watermelon Emotions —> Sadness Joy Anger Anger —> furiousness angst Brainstorm members of categories (who can think of types of vehicles?) Categorise vocabulary as they are learnt (run skip glide prance are all ways of moving) Visualise how words belong to categories and how they can branch off into subcategories. For example: Antonyms A pair of words with opposite meanings Antonyms can be gradable (on a continuum, e.g. hot/cold), complementary (one or the other, e.g. alive/dead) or relational (e.g. doctor/patient, predator/prey) fast/slow big/small right/wrong sleep/wake wife/husband parent/child Teach antonyms in pairs, to provide a reciprocal understanding of a concept Encourage students to guess what the antonym of words are (e.g. go/come, do/undo, quietly/loudly) When adding words to personal dictionaries, encourage students to make note of any antonyms Synonyms Words that have the same or similar meaning to each other. Some words will have multiple meanings (homonyms) so they may have different sets of synonyms depending on the sense of the word fair/just/objective/ impartial/unbiased leap/spring/bound/hop/ bounce debate/discuss/confer about/talk over/talk Brainstorm synonyms to explore how words are related to others Replace repeated or overused words in writing. Ask students to identify overused words, and replace them with more interesting synonyms