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continuous scale of values, which may be given names such as middle
class.
Sometimes it is usually much easier to offer explanations about the meaning of word in antonyms. For example the kind of rude means not polite.
It is worth mentioning that the explanations given here are not exact definitions of the word. The level of the explanation must be suitable to the
students’ level of English at the time so that dictionary-like accuracy can often be counter being productive.
f. Synonyms
Two words or phrases are synonyms when they have the same meaning. Terms with subtle differences between meanings are termed near-synonyms. It
can be said that A denotes the same as B; A is equivalent with B. For example: “She looks pretty” is synonym with “She looks beautiful. Sometimes it is helpful
particularly with a relatively unimportant word of passive vocabulary to provide a quick synonym explanation. It is still helpful if teacher remember to say It is
similar in meaning to…, rather than It means the same as…., The former phrase helps to build up in the student’s mind the idea that language consists of choice,
that words do not mean the same as each other; the second undermines this important attitude.
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g. The dictionary
Silberstein 1948: 110 states that dictionary is a source of many kind s of information about words. Students often benefit from instruction and practice
using an English dictionary. The elements of a dictionary entry should be introduced before students are asked to use dictionaries independently. Too often
teachers forget that it is the students who are learning and, in general, the more the students are involved in the process the more successful that is likely to be. Text
should not contain very large numbers of new words so there should not be a great number of new words at any one time. One technique for explaining these which
teacher s too frequently overlook is asking the class whether anybody knows the word-individual students do learn things outside the classroom. If not, asking one
or more students to look the word up in a dictionary at lower levels a bilingual dictionary; at higher levels a monolingual dictionary. In this way the process of
“learning a new word” also provides practice in important learning skills- dictionary using-and, for those using a good monolingual dictionary-ensures that
they do have other examples for words used in context, a note on its stress, etc.
h. Verbal explanatio n
