Application of sense relations to teaching English vocabulary

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:
 - 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 
42 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰNo. 19 (5/2019)
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 give - take
mean - generous joy - sorrow
tidy - messy 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 thick - thin
deep - shallow 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.
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 
43KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰNo. 19 (5/2019)
 LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY v
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 
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 do not 
utilize knowledge sense relations, they may fail 
to give coherence to their lesson, as Gairns and 
44 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰNo. 19 (5/2019)
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 do not always 
have the same collocates. Language learners are 
likely to be confused when using pairs as strong-
powerful, 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 low-
level 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 
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.
3. 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.