A Comparison Of "Chongman","Chongfen","Chongzu" And "Chongshi" And Suggestions For Teaching Them In International Chinese Classes

Synonym teaching has always been a key but difficult point in teaching Chinese as a second language.The four words,i.e.,Chongman,Chongfen,Chongzu and Chongshi are so confusing in meaning and use that they cause obstacles to second language learners due to their similar morphemes and meanings.Samples of the four words in use are extracted from the Modern Chinese Corpus of the National Language Committee,then sorted,filtered and analyzed in terms of part of speech,syntactic function and collocation features.An ontological analysis of the four words are made from three perspectives,i.e.,grammar,semantics and pragmatics to explore their similarities and differences.In grammatical function,all four words can serve as predicates and adverbials,but Chongfen has the strongest syntactic function,while Chongshi differs from the other three in that it functions as both verbs and adjectives.In semantics,the four words have different emphasis and prosody.Chongfen and Chongshi can go together with only abstract words while the other two can collocate both concrete or abstract words.In the pragmatic aspect,all the four are neutral,except that Chongman can be used with both positive and negative words.Effective error samples are extracted from the HSK Dynamic Composition Corpus and Jinan University Interlanguage Corpus.From low to high,the errors rate changes in the trend of Chongman < Chongshi < Chongfen< Chongzu,and the main error type being misrepresentation.Causes of such errors are analyzed by combining the analysis results with relevant textbooks and literature.Finally,based on the ontological comparison and errors analysis,suggestions are given for teachers,learners and textbook writers,with teaching activities and exercises designed relevant to the four words,hoping for providing guidance and reference for better learning and teaching of Chinese as a foreign language.