Application of sense relations to teaching English vocabulary

Vocabulary acquisition is central to language learning and of great importance to the English Language Learners. Many learners face difficulty in correctly selecting words to deliver their ideas due to their insufficient lexical knowledge. This work aims to analyze the significance of sense relations instruction in vocabulary teaching.

v LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY APPLICATION OF SENSE RELATIONS TO TEACHING ENGLISH VOCABULARY NGUYEN THI HA THUONG* * People’s Police Academy,  hathuong291288@gmail.com Received:18/4/2019; Revised: 15/5/2019; Accepted: 17/5/2019 ABSTRACT Vocabulary acquisition is central to language learning and of great importance to the English Language Learners Many learners face difficulty in correctly selecting words to deliver their ideas due to their insufficient lexical knowledge This work aims to analyze the significance of sense relations instruction in vocabulary teaching The author hopes to discuss a new path in constructing and designing a variety of exercises and activities in sense relations in attempt to promote learner’s English proficiency, especially vocabulary learning Keywords: sense relations, vocabulary teaching INTRODUCTION Vocabulary acquisition is one of the most fundamental parts which is vital for teaching and learning a foreign language Without vocabulary, there will be no development or progress made for all the other skills such as reading comprehension, listening comprehension, speaking, and writing It also plays the key roles in learners’ attempt to utilize English Simply, in frequently daily activities like reading a text (in a book, newspaper, magazine, or even manual books), listening to a piece of music, watching English TV programs and communicating with foreign friends via social networks, learners will always operate with words and widen their lexical resources Talking about the importance of vocabulary, Wilkins (1972, pp.111-112) states “… while without grammar very little can be conveyed, 38 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” To reach the goal of expressing ideas and forming utterance, people need to use words Years ago, people discovered the tremendous importance of helping learners to develop an extensive vocabulary By the beginning of 1970s, there was a major change in teaching English The focus turned from the Direct Method and Audiolingualism to the Communicative Approach which emphasized the importance of teaching vocabulary Language learners were exposed to diverse vocabulary and speaking activities Many words began being introduced during such courses and learners were encouraged to express themselves as much as possible Words not exist in isolation, as Taylor (1995, p.83) explains, word meaning acquires its full significance with reference to other related terms According to semantic theory, words are related to LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY each other and form the massive vocabulary bank of language Vocabulary is an integrated system of lexemes interrelated in sense The meaning of a word does not exist inside the word itself but spreads over the neighboring words and they have mutual affection when being combined Then, the meaning of a certain word can only be precisely described through its semantic relations with other words In real teaching and learning experience, remembering words from lists that are semantically related is more effective than from lists of words with no lexical relations So, it is natural to state that a teaching method which takes account of the psychological process underlying semantic relatedness can be more pedagogically successful REVIEW OF THEORY AND RELATED LITERATURE 2.1 Vocabulary learning and teaching There were many different definitions of a ‘word’, but Nation (2001, p.27) proposes three significant aspects which include form, meaning and use More specifically, form can be spoken form, written form and word parts Meaning of a word is the literal meaning, its concepts or referents, and it associations And, the use of a word refers to the grammatical functions, collocations, and constraints According to Jackson & Amvela (2000), the vocabulary of a language is essentially a dynamic and well-integrated system of lexemes structured by relationships of meaning Arranging vocabulary into semantic cluster of seven to ten related items rather than presenting a list of unrelated words in isolation will enhance retention Normally, if a word is separated from its environment and context, it will take the learners a longer time to remember Once the learners associate the words with their topic or context, it becomes more effective to enlarge their vocabulary bank Then, grouping words helps acquire new vocabularies v As Sadoski (2005) proposes there are two main sources of meaningful vocabulary learning: incidental learning from context and direct vocabulary instruction Generally, incidental learning refers to “learning without intent to learn” (Lyster, 2007, p.27) Direct vocabulary instruction refers to systematic demonstration of ways to determine the meanings of unknown words Semantic maps that connect a key concept with related events and ideas are excellent ways to determine the background knowledge of learners and to organize this knowledge in a way that connects what they know to the new concepts and vocabulary they will be learning Effective learning will occur when a deeper level of semantic processing is required on the part of the learners Schmitt (2008) agrees that learners have higher chances for long-term retention when they have more opportunities to engage with new unknown word The learners’ lexical resources have a direct effect on their development of linguistic competence Therefore, a great importance is put on vocabulary teaching in language teaching procedure so that the language learners are provided with sufficient knowledge about words In a language class, vocabulary is an extremely complex process which covers many aspects listing as semantic, lexcial, syntactic, and phonology Once the learners master vocabulary, they will utilize language in their work and study Then, the in-depth comprehension of semantics theory can enable them to master words, gain an insight into the implication lexcial and collocation relations of the words systems, enhance their ability of forming their own language structure and promote their competence of communication 2.2 Sense relations According to Mathews (1997), sense relations refer to any relation between lexical units within the semantic system of a language The lexical structure of a language can be seen KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) 39 v LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY as a network of sense relations, affected by the members of the lexicon Then, there does exist a relation in meaning between lexical units of a language And, it is clearly that words cannot be defined independently of other words that are semantically related to them and delimit their sense As Kreidler (1998) explains, meaning of a word depends on its associations with other and it is relational aspect that is taken in to account Sense relation is a paradigmatic relation between words or predicates, it refers to “the knowledge of how lexemes are associated with other lexemes” Kreidler (1998, p.48) There are two big groups of sense relations: synonymic groups and antonymic groups While the first type deals with sameness, the second type is contrastive And Cruse (2004) classifies sense relations into two classes: the first entails exclusion and opposition, the second entails inclusion and identity 2.2.1 Sense Relations of Inclusion and Identity The discussion in this part includes the notions of synonymy, homonymy, polysemy, and hyponymy Synonymy Nguyễn Hoà (2004, p.72) defines synonyms as “words of the same parts of speech which have similar meaning, but not identical meanings.” Synonyms are phonetically and morphologically different words belonging to same part of speech, possessing similar denotation but differing in connotation, combinability Home and house can sometimes replace each other but they differ in terms of connotation On the other hand, misfortune and accident are synonyms and different in denotation Take a look at these following sentences: - My house is very big/large - He presented firm/strong ideas in the meeting In these examples, the two pairs are partial synonyms because all their meanings are not identical In the first sentence big and large are 40 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) semantically equivalent and they can be used interchangeably Similarly, the second pair firm and strong share the same feature However, there are clearly not synonymous in all of their meanings, as in the following pairs of sentences: Pair (1): - Pollution is a big environmental problem in Vietnam - Pollution is a large environmental problem in Vietnam Pair (2): - There was a strong wind last night - There was a firm wind last night Big and large, strong and firm are similar in meaning only under specific distributional and although all four sentences above are grammatically well-formed, the second ones are collocationally unacceptable Homonymy Kreidler (1998, p.58) states “two ore more forms that are identical in speech but have different meanings are homonyms” A homonym is a word that is written and/or pronounced the same way as another, but has a different meaning such as: tail/tale or two/too/to Homonyms can create ambiguity, as Nguyễn Hoà (2004, p.68) points, “homonym refers to a situation where different words happens accidentally to have the same forms” A word or sentence is ambiguous if it can be understood or interpreted in more than one way Take the following sentence as an example: “She used to bawl every night.” – it can be paraphrased in two different ways: - She used to shout angrily every night - She used to weep noisily every night Then, actually there are different “bawl”: bawl in the first sentence and bawl in the second LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY sentence are homonyms They are written in the same way and share the same way of pronunciation, but they denote two different actions Another example of homonyms is found in the following pair of sentences: - John Beauchamp de Holt was the first British baron in 1378 - Rupert Murdoch is an old-fashioned press baron The first and second baron are homonyms They are spelled and pronounced in the same way but convey different meanings The first baron refers “a member of the lowest order of British nobility, minor royalty”, whereas the second baron refers to “a powerful person in business or industry” It is sometimes confusing to differentiate homonymy from polysemy because the later also deals with a pair of words which share the same way of spelling and pronouncing Polysemy Richards and Schmidt (2002, p.406) introduces the definition of polysemy as “word having two or more closely related meanings.” Sometimes it is confusing to differentiate between homonymy and polysemy A polysemy is a word that has many different but related meanings while homonyms (homonyms proper) are words that have completely different meanings Take the following sentences as example: - Charles is a good actor Many people love him and his films - Mr Brown is a very good man He donated a lot of money to the charity The word good in the two sentences above is a polysemy with the meaning “skillful” in the first sentence and “kind” in the second sentence The meanings of good in the above examples are related to each other Another example of polysemy can be found in: v - Vietnam is rich in natural resources - Qatar is a rich country with a per capita income of $123,930 Then, the distinction between homonymy and polysemy deals with the closeness or relatedness of the senses between words; in other words, they are different from each other regarding semantic relatedness While homonymy deals with different meanings, polysemy deals with related meanings Hyponymy According to Nguyễn Hoà (2004, p.122) hyponym is “the member whose intentional meaning is specific enough to cover the meaning of the superordinate whereas the superordinate member is the one whose extensional meaning is broad enough to cover the hyponym.” For example, a “rose” is a flower, but not every flower is a rose The meaning of “flower” is included in the meaning of “rose” Simply, hyponymy can be understood as a relationship between two words, in which the meaning of one of the words includes the meaning of the other word There are many other cases such as: cat and animal, pigeon and bird, orchid and flower Cat is said to be a hyponym of animal, pigeon a hyponym of bird, and orchid a hyponym of flower On the other hand, animal is said to be the superordinate (also called hypernym) of cat, bird the superordinate of pigeon, and flower the superordinate of orchid Such relation is often described as one of inclusion 2.2.2 Sense Relations of Exclusion and Opposition The relations of senses between words can be seen from their oppositeness or that the sense of a word is excluded from the sense of another The discussion includes antonymy Antonymy Kreidler (1998, p.10) defines “two words that make opposite statements about the same KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) 41 v LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY subject are antonyms” Basically, antonymy is the phenomenon in which the words have the sense relation which involves the oppositeness Kreidler (1998, p.100) clarifies that “Antonyms may be nouns like Communist and non-Communist or verbs such as advance and retreat, but antonymous pairs of adjectives are especially numerous.” Many words, especially those denoting concrete objects have no antonyms Usually, adjectives denoting quality, verbs denoting actions or states and abstract nouns have antonyms; take these following pairs as examples: ugly - pretty mean - generous tidy - messy give - take joy - sorrow old - young If a pair of words is antonyms, they belong to the same semantic field, nearly identical in distribution, such as “big – small” – both these two words are adjective and they are about size In many pairs of antonyms, one is marked and the other is unmarked For example, when asking some one’s height, the question to be formed is “How tall is he?” and it is incorrect to say “How short is he?” There are several pairs listing as: heavy - light deep - shallow thick - thin wide - narrow There are four types of antonyms according to John Lyon’s classification Antonyms proper: Antonyms proper are easily gradable, based on the operation of gradation They are opposite ends of a continuous scale of values like: hot - warm - cool – cold Complementary antonyms: This type of antonym involves two items: the assertion of one is the negation of the other Binary antonyms come in pairs and between them exhaust all relevant possibilities If one is applicable, then the other can’t be, and vice versa These pairs: alive – dead and awake – asleep are typical examples 42 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) Conversives: Conversives denote the same situation but from different points of view, with a reversal of the order of participants and their roles; for examples: borrow – lend, sell – buy, employer – employee, interviewer – interviewee and examiner – examinee Directional: This type of antonyms present opposite directions of motion such as come – go and arrive – depart 2.3 Sense relations awareness Sense relations are one of important elements with regard to learning semantics, the study of language meaning The sense of a word can be understood from its similarity with other words, on the other hand, it can also be learned from its oppositeness with other words Sense relations show the relationship between words and their meanings According to the meaning we can differentiate between two distinctions: the first is the “reference” which shows the external meaning of a word (what the word refers to in the physical world), while the other is the “sense” that indicates the internal meaning of a word (its content) Sense relations can indicate many kinds of relations such as sameness or oppositeness (as discussed in the previous part) Lexical relations can be discussed from paradigmatic and syntagmatic point of view which deals with meaning in different directions, these relations are being used to describe words or collocations; the mutual expectancy of words or the ability of word to predict the likelihood of another word occurring These relations are relevant to each other They overlap with each other in terms of the relationship between the meaning of the word in the physical world and the experience of the way it can co-occur with other words From the previous point of view it can be confirmed that sense relations study the association LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY between words and their relevant to each other Absolutely, it is never a correct concept when stating that the idea of each word separately has one meaning The awareness of these relations should be taken in consideration by the learners because it plays an important role in the nature of the vocabulary and shows the way of its learning 2.4 The importance of using sense relations in vocabulary teaching and learning As discussed above, words cannot be defined independently and the structure of a language can be seen as a network of sense relations, affected by the members of the lexicon Lyons (1995) proposes an analogy, a structure is like a web in which each strand is one such relation and each knot in the web is a different word or expression Then, learning a language means the leaners study a ‘network’ or a ‘linguistic web’ Nguyễn Hoà (2004, p.120) emphasizes, “there is no way we can speak about structure without relation” And there is no way we can learn a language without forming our own set of vocabulary with the ‘links’ among the words Firstly, sense relations help learners build a mental network of related words which helps memorization and retrieval of lexical items, which can improve fluency They also represent a logical way of organizing new vocabulary for learners, which again in turn helps memorization When the process of vocabulary development is carefully prepared, the learners become more fluent when speaking about a specific subject If for instance they have studied hyponyms of ‘food’, it will be easier for them to talk about this topic as they will have all (or most) of the lexis they need This helps learners feel more confident and relaxed when discussing about a given topic, as they know they have studied and memorized the relevant vocabulary They make it possible for learners to develop their own networks of vocabulary relate to different fields If learners face some loss of words, there would possibly be a better v long-term retention under the guidance of sense relation strategy In short, applying sense relations theory produces greater contribution to promote vocabulary acquisition and retention than the traditional methods Secondly, knowledge about sense relations enhance learners’ understanding of words which results in better word choices in communicating According to Saussure theory, a word consist of form (written and spoken) and meaning Knowing a word not only means to know the from and the meaning, but more importantly, to be able to connect the two Besides, when dealing with homonyms and polysemous items, it is vital for language users to know the concepts behind the words, to acquire the word meanings in different situations and to be able to produce the words in a wide range of contexts In other words, misinterpretation or misuse of lexical items can be avoided Moreover, knowing a word also means knowing the associations of a word which is the semantic relationships between words listing as synonymy, antonymy, and hyponymy It was emphasized by Nation (1990, p.52) that “understanding these relations is useful for explaining the meanings of words and for creating activities to enrich learners’ understanding of words.” Last but not least, having a rich lexical resource and acquiring knowledge about word meaning bring learners a source of power and make them become a better reader, writer and speaker; which generally helps open a wider path to success in school and their future work The most handy tool, as Pikulski and Templeton (2004) suggest, is a rich lexical resource and skills for using the words that language teachers can equip their learners There are a wide range of teaching techniques and activities that teachers can design for vocabulary teaching but the key point is how to choose and employ the most suitable ones in the teaching and learning environment If they not utilize knowledge sense relations, they may fail to give coherence to their lesson, as Gairns and KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) 43 v LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY Redman (1986, p.32) point out Then, aspects of lexis such as polysemy, homonymy, synonymy, antonyms and so on should be taken in to account 2.5 Challenges of learning sense relations As Lehrer (1974) mentions, languages are setting up their semantic fields in certain ways; this fact causes obstacles and misinterpretations in language teaching and learning Innovative teaching approaches are required so that language learners can comprehend the real meanings behind the words and being able to communicate as fluently as possible The first difficulty lies in the learners’ low motivational state in the learning process because of the high cognitive demands in understanding knowledge about sense relations As Higa (1963) finds that pairs of synonyms take longer to learn than pairs of unrelated words; this is understandable since learners are more likely to confuse words that convey similar meaning than words without close semantic relations Later, Higa (1965) points that the closer the semantic link between words, the more difficult it is to learn the words in set Another reason causing this matter roots from the truth that synonyms with similar meanings not always have the same collocates Language learners are likely to be confused when using pairs as strongpowerful, firm-strong, big-large as analyzed in the previous part From my observation of several years working with multiple-level of language learners, it seems to be impossible to teach young learners (who are at primary level) about sense relations when their knowledge of mother tongue is even limited It is a truth that teaching lowlevel learners to identify the types of antonyms or recognize polysemy is uneasy because it requires a deep understanding of semantic features The second problem is found in the learners’ needs in learning vocabulary as Higa (1965) suggests that learners may lack motivation to learn 44 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) two words that have similar meaning or denote similar information, which leads to difficulty in learning synonyms This fact is also indicated in studies by Tinkham (1993) and Waring (1997) Furthermore, as Laufer (1990) states, the less advanced learners are unlikely to learn new words with similar meanings because they have a greater need to learn unknown second language meanings Furthermore, in English For Specific or Content and Language Integrated Learning courses, although it is important to introduce technical terms, there remain challenges for both teachers and learners because it is impossible to pair the vocabularies into antonyms or synonyms For example, the author has been working in a police’s academy and English lessons may focus on topics like: the penal code of Vietnam, mutual legal assistance, extradition, crime investigation and so on It appears that grouping words or mind mapping are the two most frequent and favorable choices in designing activities in class RECOMMENDATIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING VOCABULARY In the light of obtained result it might be appropriate to make the following recommendations for language teachers in their teaching techniques and methods: Playing the role as a facilitator, a guider and a supporter, teachers should always keep in mind that their teaching targets should be directed to increase the learners’ collocational competence with the vocabulary they have already got Then, they should raise learners’ awareness of sense relations in vocabulary acquisition, knowledge about words families should be taught in language classes Second languages learners should be guided to learn vocabulary by grouping words in different types of semantic field (lexical sets) such as: similar meaning, opposites, derivatives, idioms or multi words, verbs, inclusion and so on LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY Because learners should realize that the meaning they first learnt for a word may not be the one that it has in a new context, they need encouragement in guessing the meaning through the context For example, when dealing with a reading text with a variety of unknown words, teachers should increase learners’ stock of vocabulary by using the word relations like antonyms and synonyms The teachers should guide them to guess the meaning of new words from the context Besides, it is important for teachers to remind the learners not to use source like dictionary as the first tool to look up for any word Enough exercises should be provided in the section of “antonymy” and “relational opposites” for the learners to make the correct use of them as well as to differentiate between them Knowledge about part or speech should also be highlighted so that the learners are directed to generate different words Furthermore, materials found in authentic dialogues or daily conversations, TV programs should be taken into use not only to enhance listening skill but also promote the learners’ ability in guessing the words through spoken text When working with learners at low levels, teachers can use visual aids to teach vocabulary to make the process easier For instance, when teaching adjectives, teachers should generally give learners a set of adjectives with pictures to represent them Once they have matched the adjectives to the pictures, teachers give them the antonyms and ask them to match them with their opposites; this also helps build a long-term memory Besides, it is also possible to teach lexical sets or hyponyms together In particularly, labeling exercise can be adopted; for instance, teachers illustrate by giving a picture (e.g of a house) with blank labels and a set of words (e.g rooms and parts of a house) and ask them to label the items This is generally very effective and helps learners memorize words more easily with visual images At more advanced levels, teachers can draw learners’ attention to homonyms and polysemy when encountering them in exercises or texts If v possible, we can represent the different meanings with pictures or drawings If that is not possible, we can try giving at least 2-3 examples for each item, to help learners grasp the differences in nuance (for polysemous words) or in meaning (for homonyms) A more likely way to get words lists that match learners’ desires and needs is to have the learners make their own lists from materials they use It is certain that learners will learn the vocabulary of fields that interest them CONCLUSION Basically, knowing a word involves being able to recognize its sound, its spelling and to distinguish it from a word with a similar form Knowing a word is also about the ability to produce it, to use it in grammatical pattern along with the word it usually collocates with and to use it in a suitable situation using the word to stand for the meaning it represents Clearly, sense relations are good descriptive devices helping with the compilation of dictionaries and thesauri, as source for the development of vocabulary learning and of large-scale databases of words for use in various applications Therefore, understanding and applying knowledge of sense relations in enhancing lexical resources can benefit both teachers and learners in teaching and learning English In order to improve learner’s language proficiency, it is advised to equip them an adequate bank of vocabularies and create chances to promote suitable responds in communication Grasping well lexical resources can enable people to successfully deliver their messages without causing any ambiguity or misunderstanding./ References: Kreidler, C W (1998) Introducing English Semantics London: Routledge Cruse, D.A (1995) Lexical Semantics Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Gairns, R and Redman, S (1989) Working With Words: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Vocabulary Cambridge: Cambridge University Press KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) 45 v LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY Higa, M (1963) Interference effects of intralist words relationship in verbal learning Journal of Verbal learning and Verbal Behavior, 2, 170-175 Higa, M (1965) The psycholinguistic concept of “difficulty” and the teaching of foreign language vocabulary Language learning, 15, 167-179 Nguyễn Hoà (2004) Understanding English Semantics NXB Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội Nation, I S P (1990) Teaching and learning vocabulary Boston, Mass: Newbury House Nation, P (2001) Learning vocabulary in another language Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Pikulski, J.J and Templeton, S (2004) Teaching and Developing Vocabulary Litho in U.S.A: Houghton Mifflin Company Jackson, H., & Amvela, E (2000) Words, Meaning and Vocabulary Trowbridge: The Cromwell Press Richards, J.C & R Schmidt (2002) Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics 3rd ed London: Pearson Education Limited Kearns, K (2001) Modern linguistics series-semantics, United States of America: Macmillan Sadoski, M (2005) A dual coding view of vocabulary learning Reading & Writing Quarterly, 21 (3), 221-238 Laufer, B (1990) Words you know: How they affect the words you learn, In J.Fisiak (Ed.) Further insights into contrastive linguistics Amsterdam: John Benjamins Saussure, F.de (1996) Course in General Linguistics New York: McGraw- Hill Book Company Lehrer, A (1974) Semantic Fields and Lexical Structure NorthHolland linguistic series, 11 Amsterdam:North-Holland; New York: American Elsevier Lyons, J (1995) Linguistic Semantics: An introduction London: CUP Lyster, R (2007) Learning and teaching languages through content: A counterbalanced approach Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Mathews, N (1997) A introduction USA: Texas: Honston Headache Clinic Schmitt, N (2008) Instructed second language vocabulary learning Language Teaching Research, 12 (3), 329-363 Taylor, J R (1995) Linguistic Categorization Oxford: Clarendon Press Tinkham, T (1993) The effect of semantic clustering on the learning of second language vocabulary System, 21, 371380 Waring, R (1997) The negative effects of learning words in semantics sets: A replication, System, 25, 261-274 Wilkins, D (1972) Linguistics in language teaching London: Arnold ỨNG DỤNG LÝ THUYẾT VỀ MỐI QUAN HỆ NGỮ NGHĨA TRONG GIẢNG DẠY TỪ VỰNG TIẾNG ANH NGUYỄN THỊ HÀ THƯƠNG Tóm tắt: Việc học từ vựng vơ quan trọng q trình học ngôn ngữ đặc biệt với người học tiếng Anh Nhiều sinh viên gặp khó khăn việc chọn từ ngữ để diễn đạt ý tưởng kiến thức từ vựng chưa đầy đủ Bài viết nhằm phân tích tầm quan trọng việc ứng dụng lý thuyết mối quan hệ ngữ nghĩa giảng dạy từ vựng Tác giả hy vọng đề xuất số giải pháp xây dựng thiết kế nhiều tập hoạt động ứng dụng lý thuyết quan hệ ngữ nghĩa nhằm nâng cao lực tiếng Anh người học, đặc biệt học từ vựng Từ khoá: quan hệ ngữ nghĩa, giảng dạy từ vựng Ngày nhận bài: 18/4/2019; ngày sửa chữa: 15/5/2019; ngày duyệt đăng: 17/5/2019 46 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) ... (2000), the vocabulary of a language is essentially a dynamic and well-integrated system of lexemes structured by relationships of meaning Arranging vocabulary into semantic cluster of seven to ten... competence of communication 2.2 Sense relations According to Mathews (1997), sense relations refer to any relation between lexical units within the semantic system of a language The lexical structure of. .. pigeon, and flower the superordinate of orchid Such relation is often described as one of inclusion 2.2.2 Sense Relations of Exclusion and Opposition The relations of senses between words can be seen