How does the average student revise Chinese? The typical way is to go through the vocab handbook (词语手册), and revise the pronunciations, meanings and how to write the keywords. If there is time, maybe read the example sentences.

But there’s one exercise that students should do but most don’t.

词语搭配 or Vocabulary Extension.

I know you might be thinking “huh, why is this important?” Trust me, I felt this way too, but all my senior teachers swear by it and make it a key part of their lessons.

Quick refresher, 词语搭配 is when you have a base word or phrase like 保卫 (to protect), and you extend it by adding another phrase to form new phrases like 保卫国家 (to protect one’s country) or 保卫祖国 (to protect one’s motherland)

Sounds pretty simple?

But according to many teachers I speak to, a majority of students are stumped when a word they know appears in a different variation.

For instance, you might think if a child knows the word 草 (grass), he or she will be able to guess the meaning of 草地, 草原 and 草丛?

While trivial for an adult, many students are stumped when they see 词语搭配 variations in a comprehension passage. Which could cause them to lose marks.vWe believe strongly in the value of 词语搭配 and make it a key part of our Chinese classes and our Vocab King learning platform. And here’s three reasons why you should too.

 

 

1. Easy way to extend vocabulary

If your child wanted to ace the English exam, would you ask him to only focus on the textbook? No you wouldn’t, and you would encourage him or her to read widely because you can’t do well in English relying solely on textbook Vocab.

So why would Chinese be any different? If your child has a good grasp on textbook content, the next step is to accumulate additional, out-of-syllabus Vocab, and that’s why so many Compo classes focus on good phrases (好词佳句) because strong Vocab is the foundation for doing well in Chinese.

词语搭配 is another way of extending Vocab that is easier for students to absorb compared to memorising a brand-new list of idioms due to the Velcro theory of Memory.

Chip & Dan Heath in their seminal book “Made to Stick” explain that “Memory is like Velcro. The more hooks an experience has, the better it is remembered.”

From a language point of view, when we learn a brand new idiom/phrase, it’s easily forgotten because we don’t know anything about it (i.e. no hooks).

Compare this to learning 草地 and 草原 after already knowing 草. Since we already know 草 means grass, it acts as a hook that helps us remember that 草原 and 草地 mean grasslands.

Similarly, when we teach 歪 in our classes, we will also teach 歪歪斜斜, and these additional phrases help improve your child’s Compo writing by making it more descriptive.

词语搭配 is an easy way to extend your child’s Vocab that is especially useful for Composition, Comprehension and Oral.

2. Reinforces old words

词语搭配 isn’t only about learning new words – it’s great at reinforcing old Vocab.

Pop quiz: if your child learns a word for the first time, how much of it will he or she forget by next week?

Pretty much everything. As we explained previously, this is due to the “Forgetting Curve” – when we learn something, we forget half of it within a day, and almost all of it by next week. The trick to beating the “Forgetting Curve” villain is to revise the word regularly.

But most children hate revising Chinese, and will typically focus only on what’s super urgent – like the spelling due tomorrow. Material from previous chapters or levels are rarely touched.

From experience, material from previous levels can be a hidden roadblock – even if they aren’t tested directly, they appear in Paper 2 questions and comprehension passages. And if your child forgets these old words, it’s still going to trip him or her up.

词语搭配 is an efficient way of simultaneously reinforcing a new word while revising older words.

For instance, let’s say your P3 child is practising the word 保卫 (P3, Chapter 1) and is extending it by learning 保卫国家. The second part of the extension “国家” comes from a previous level (P2, Chapter 18) and is being automatically revised.

If your child still remembers what 国家 means, that learning the full phrase 保卫国家 is easy; while if he or she has actually forgotten that 国家 means country, then this forces him or her to revise. Either way, it’s win-win.

3. Helps with sentence structure

Sentence structure (组词成句 and 造句) is another common area that students struggle with, and practising 词语搭配 will naturally help.

The common problem here is that many students have very little exposure to Chinese outside class, and tend to use English sentence structures when trying to construct Chinese sentences (aka “think in English and translate to Chinese”).

词语搭配 involves chunking two words or phrases together (e.g. 包围 + 国家 = 保卫国家), and with practise, your child will naturally gain a sense of what phrases work together, and is a stepping stone towards sentence-structure practice.

HOW TO TEACH 词语搭配

I hope this post has convinced you about the importance of incorporating 词语搭配 to your child’s Chinese practice, and you can easily do so.

Almost all Vocab handbooks provide vocab extensions for keywords, so it’s a simple matter of ensuring your child goes through it instead of skipping them. Basically if your child is currently willing to practise Chinese with you, just add 词语搭配 to your existing routine.

But what if your child doesn’t like practising Chinese?

In that situation, you can consider Vocab King, our learning platform that makes learning Chinese like a game. Our AI engine automatically integrates 词语搭配 and other vocab practise into a fun Pet Battle game that your child actually wants to do, and 88% of students who practise regularly see significant improvement.

Vocab King is available for free if you are attending KidStartNow’s weekly enrichment classes. Alternatively, if you already have existing enrichment lessons and are interested in Vocab King as a supplement, we provide 7-day free trials. Simply sign up above or whatsapp +65-9820-7272 for more information.