5. Illustrate with examples
You may explain, for instance, the meaning of a word, illustrating your explanation with examples of its use in various contexts, relating these as far as possible to the learners’ own lives and experiences.
6. Get feedback
When you have finished explaining, check what they have understood. It is not just enough to ask “Do you understand?” ; learners will sometimes say they did even if they did not, out of politeness or unwillingness to lose face, or because they think they know what they have to do, but in fact completely misunderstood! It is better to ask them to do something that will show their understanding: to paraphrase in their own words, provide further illustration of their own.
Traditionally antonyms are defined as words that have opposite meaning. This definition is open to criticism. The latest linguistic investigations emphasize that antonyms are similar as words belonging to the same part of speech and the same semantic field, having the same grammatical meaning and functions, as well as similar collocations. Like synonyms antonyms are interchangeable at least at some contexts (hot in its figurative meaning “angry, excited” is chiefly combined with the names of unpleasant emotions: hot resentment, hot scorn; its antonym cold occurs with the same words). Unlike synonyms antonyms do not differ in style, or emotional colouring (they express, as a rule, emotional characteristics of the same intensity).
So antonyms are two or more words belonging to the same pat of speech, contradictory or contrary in meaning, and interchangeable at least at some contexts.
Almost every word can have one or more synonyms; comparatively few have antonyms because not all notions can be opposed to one another. Antonyms are primarily found in adjectives, nouns expressing quality and state.
It should be noted, that as words are polysemantic ones and the same words may have different antonyms (light bag-heavy bag; light wind-strong wind; light colors-dark colors).
Generally we may divide antonyms into 2 groups: absolute and derivational.
Absolute antonyms are subdivided into antonyms proper where opposition is gradual (cold (cool)-(warm) hot; large-little or small), complementaries having a binary opposition (dead-alive, single-married), conversives denoting one and the same referent from different points of view(to sell-to buy, to give to receive).
Derivational antonyms may be affixal (happy-unhappy, logical-illogical) or suffixal (hopeful-hopeless).
It is not always possible to replace a word by its opposite. Where it is possible you may notice that some words have several opposites depending on the context.
The opposite of “old”, for example, can be “new” or “young” depending on the situation.
There are some antonyms that are called auto-antonyms - words that have two opposite meanings. For example, to "clip" may mean to cut a little piece off, or to put a little piece on. To "look over" may mean careful scrutiny or that you missed an important detail. Sometimes the antonymy may be historical: "nice" used to denote an unpleasant quality. There is a discussion of whether any generalities could be made about such pairs. Are they regularly motivated, or always a coincidence? Meanwhile, here are more auto-antonyms that got left out of last post: One auto-antonym is "moot", which at once means "suitable for debate" and "not worth discussing".
Impregnable: able to impregnated or inable to be pregnated, cope(s)mate: used to mean antagonist and now means partner or comrade, It turns out that they were having a week celebrating "fence-setters", evidently another term for what is calling auto-antonyms. BRUCE NEVIN reminds us of an intercontinental auto-antonym pair: "public school" in Britain is "private school" in the USA and vice versa.
Infer: historically (and now, informally) this means "imply" as well. Rent, lease: several pointed out to me that these means both lend and borrow. In addition, Chinese operates similarly with respect to this pair, and WOLFGANG LIPP notes a similar auto-antonymy to represent "give" and "take" in pronunciation but not in writing.
Learn/teach: in "sub" - Standard English, these two meanings fuse into “learn”, as they do in standard Russian “uchit'” Here is “sensitive”: this may describe either someone with profound understanding for the feelings of others, and tolerates differences of opinion (thus "sensitivity training" for group leaders) as well as a paranoid who doesn't listen to what people are really saying, and decides to take everything as a personal insult.
Hole/whole: Spelled the first way, an entire absence of matter; the second, entire presence. This reminds me of "pit" which can be either a hollow or the stone of a fruit. Which reminds me of "seeded" oranges (insert your favourite fruit here) - oranges with seeds (as opposed to navel oranges, which have no seeds), OR oranges that have had their seeds removed. If you think you're beginning to see some patterns here, you're not alone! There were received a few theories on the ultimate essence of auto-antonymy, historical, psychological, and sociological approaches. These theories show that auto-antonymy comes about for a variety of reasons.
“I've been enjoying the discussion of words that are their own antonyms.
At first I thought the classic example of Latin Altus "high" or "deep"
might fit in, but as I thought about it I figured it was just unmarked
for point of view (say when cleaning out an empty swimming pool then
"Deep" becomes "high") so I just looked to see if it was on the list and
got a comment. No. Good. But one that I have long wondered about is
"risk" as in "he risked winning the game". I was shocked (as a teenager)
the first time I saw "he risked losing the game" (or something like that)
in print, because I previously thought (and am still inclined toward)
the complement of risk being the desirable result, not the undesirable
one. Whether or not this fits into this discussion, I wonder if anyone
else has had a similar (or opposite) reaction or any thoughts
about what's going on in the case of "risk"[2]”.
Teaching antonyms requires great skill and practice. For this purpose the teacher uses various techniques and methods.
For example, while teaching antonyms “small” and “big” he uses pictures for presenting them. He says: In these pictures you see two balls. (The balls should differ only in size.) This is a small ball, and this is a big ball. This ball is small, and that ball is big. Now, Sasha, come up to the picture and point to the small ball (big ball).
Then the teacher shows another picture with two houses in it – a white house and a yellow house, and he asks another pupil to point to the white house, to the u yellow house, and so on.
The teacher may use gestures, for example, for conveying the meaning of stand up, sit down. He says: Lena, stand up. He shows with his hands what she must do. Lena stands up. Now, sit down. Again with the movement of his hands he shows the girl what she must do. The other pupils listen to the teacher and watch what Lena is doing. Then many pupils are invited to perform the actions.
If the antonyms are difficult for understanding the teacher may use the learners’ mother tongue and translate them directly or to give the analogies. Forexample, theteachersays: антоним слова “широкий” на русском языке будет “узкий”, а по-английски это слово звучит как “narrow”.
The teacher must be sure of his vocabulary. . These questions obviously test vocabulary. So if yours could use some work, spend time improving it. Apart from having a great vocabulary, you can also do well on antonyms by using test-smarts and strategy.
Antonyms present you with a single word followed by five answer choices containing words or short phrases. Your task here is to find the answer choice that’s most nearly opposite in meaning to the original word. If you’re stumped about the meaning of a word, try to think of a context where you’ve heard the word before. You may not be able to recite the definition of the word covert, for instance, but you’ve probably heard the phrase “covert operation” to describe some type of cloak-and-dagger activity. Also, use your knowledge of foreign languages and word roots to help “decode” the meaning of a tough word. For instance, you may not know what benediction means, but you may be able to determine that the root bene means “good” from knowing the more common word “benevolent.” That may be all you need to answer a question if you spot a word like “curse” among the answers.
Although antonym questions test knowledge of vocabulary more directly than do any of the other verbal question types, antonym questions measure not merely the strength of your vocabulary but also your ability to reason from a given concept to its opposite. Antonyms may require only rather general knowledge of a word, or they may require that you make fine distinctions among answer choices. Antonyms are generally confined to nouns, verbs, and adjectives; answer choices may be single words or phrases.
Here are some approaches that may be helpful in answering antonym questions:
· Remember that you are looking for the word that is the most nearly opposite to the given word; you are not looking for a synonym. Many words do not have a precise opposite, so you must look for the answer choice that expresses a concept most nearly opposite to that of the given word.
· In some cases more than one of the answer choices may appear at first to be opposite to the given word. When this happens, try to define more precisely or in greater detail the meaning of the given word.
· In weighing answer choices, it is often useful to make up a sentence using the given word or words. Substitute the answer choices in the phrase or sentence and see which best “fits”. The best answer will be the one that reverses the meaning or tone of the sentence or phrase.
· Remember that a particular word may have more than one meaning.
· Use your knowledge of root, prefix, and suffix meanings to help you determine the meanings of unfamiliar words.
What is a word-retrieval problem?
The terms “word retrieval problem” or “word finding difficulty” imply that the person knows and understands the word, and has used it correctly before. However, they have difficulty retrieving such known words at times. Children and adults with language disorders are frequently found to have word retrieval difficulties. Often when a person (child or adult) is having difficulty retrieving a word they will have the sense that it is “on the tip of their tongue”: a state of affairs familiar to all of us; at other times they seem simply to “go blank”.
These activities are intended for children .
Not all of the activities will suit all children - so be selective.
Put the emphasis on listening, thinking and speaking.
Give the child time to think, but don’t leave it so long that they are struggling to find the word. Rather than letting them persist unsuccessfully, tell them the answer, and go on with the next few items. Then ask them the one that was difficult again.
Aim for a high success-rate to encourage motivation and confidence.
Adapt the tasks to suit the (developmental) age of the person. Talk about words and word-meanings.
As natural opportunities arise talk about such topics as “Why is Big Bird called Big Bird?” Talk about people being named after other people. Talk about why certain names might have been chosen for pets and TV characters (Cookie Monster, Vinny the Poo, Uncle Scrooge, The Fat Controller, etc). Try to work these conversations in around topics of genuine interest to the child.
Do this as a sentence completion (cloze) activity (e.g., “The opposite of hot is...”) or use a question-and-answer format (e.g., “What is the opposite of hot?”), or as a confrontation naming task using pictures in which the child has to name “opposites pictures” as rapidly as they can (e.g., hot cold, wet dry, big little, fast slow, deep shallow, apart together).
APlay word games involving differences
For example, “What is different about a bird and a plane? They can both fly, but they are different because...”
AChecking test
Each of the following questions begins with a single word in capital letters. Five answer choices follow. Select the answer choice that has the meaning most opposite to the word in capitals.
1.CEDE:
(A) estimate (B) fail (C) get ahead of (D) flow out of (E) retain
2. ACRID:
(A) surly
(B) vapid (C) damp (D) steady (E) sweet
3. NOISOME:
(B) healthful (C) peaceful (D) morose (E) rancorous
BAnswers