Paco Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 4222 days ago 145 posts - 251 votes Speaks: Cantonese*
| Message 1 of 26 09 August 2014 at 2:10pm | IP Logged |
"Initially opposites like hot and cold should be learned at widely separated times."
---Source: question number 6, http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/resources/vocrefs/vocab-
testa
What do you think? Could you locate any relevant literature, for or against? Does it
agree with your experience?
It seems to suggest they should be introduced at deliberately separated times, which is
against my intuition. My gut feeling is it does not matter. But it is just intuition, not
science, so I might be wrong.
Edited by Paco on 09 August 2014 at 2:11pm
2 persons have voted this message useful
|
Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5711 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin
| Message 2 of 26 09 August 2014 at 2:39pm | IP Logged |
I don't remember when and where I read it, but I think I did read reports that learning antonyms or words like all the basic colours at the same time makes it easy to confuse them (unless they're in a related language with many cognates).
On the other hand it is possible to use replacement drills/exercises with these words, so they are often introduced at the same time.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Michel1020 Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4962 days ago 365 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 3 of 26 09 August 2014 at 4:32pm | IP Logged |
Against my intuition too.
I think it could be very positive to look for the opposite by yourself. I don't do it very often. Well I never do it.
You could save a few words to learn by using negative. Do you need cold when you could say not hot ? My sciences teachers would desagree they always asked "don't tell me what it is not, tell me what it is".
1 person has voted this message useful
|
rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5181 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin
| Message 4 of 26 09 August 2014 at 4:52pm | IP Logged |
Actually I would agree with that advice. I tend to confuse hot & cold in French & Italian. I would have been better not to have learned them at the same time. However the confusion will eventually go away the more you use the language, so it isn't really an issue.
5 persons have voted this message useful
|
Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5279 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 5 of 26 09 August 2014 at 5:23pm | IP Logged |
I agree. I learned the Russian words for "still' and 'already' at the same time, and always confuse them. I also
make mistakes with he and she and his and her in Russian which I also learned at the same time, and I do
not know how many people I have heard who do the same in English.
6 persons have voted this message useful
|
Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4954 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 6 of 26 09 August 2014 at 10:50pm | IP Logged |
I think it doesn't matter. I've been learning opposites together or separately, depening on the situation. And in both cases, there were times I could remember just the opposite, either because of "better afinity" to one of the words learnt together or, more frequently, due to one of the opposites being used more, including cases where I was learning the opposites so far apart I didn't even have exposure to one of them.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5544 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes
| Message 7 of 26 09 August 2014 at 10:57pm | IP Logged |
I can fully support the advice. I have experienced it many times, that I knew, this word means either near of far, cheap or expensive, easy or difficult. In passive skills you can usually decide by context, but actively it is a mess.
5 persons have voted this message useful
|
Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4528 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian
| Message 8 of 26 10 August 2014 at 12:14am | IP Logged |
When learning Esperanto there is no choice but to learn the words for hot and cold
together, because opposites are formed by the addition of 'mal-' to the start of a
word.
So, for example, varma = warm/hot and malvarma = cold, bona = good and malbona = bad,
trinki = to drink and maltrinki I shall leave to your imagination ;)
Mostly this system works pretty well because 'mal' often carries a negative
connotation, and so it's fairly easy to remember which opposite is which. The two I
struggle with are dekstra/maldekstra (right/left) and ferma/malferma (closed/open)
which don't seem quite so intuitive.
Esperanto is probably a one-off in this respect but I think I always try to learn
opposites together in other languages too and I don't think I've had any problems. My
favourite Croatian textbook has a list of adjectives with their opposites and I think
it's one of the most useful pages in the book.
3 persons have voted this message useful
|