Learning Journal #1 (105)

[Minyao Li]

The reading basically helps me to figure out what should I pay attention to when I express and absorb/analyze the message when learning a target language. First, the view of the relationship between words and things influences how I express and absorb the language during the learning process. I could use a more of naturalist view to learn the basic meaning of new vocabulary at the beginning: to connect words to certain things in the real life. Later, however, I need to pay attention to the sense and the reference of the words I learn, because reference, such as connecting words with physical things, would not work well when the word has different meanings in different circumstances. Because words have synonymy, hyponymy, and antonymy,   it is critical for the learner to precisely sub-divide the meanings of the words. Reference can be vague and not specific enough. Sense in this case, by explaining words by words based on different language concept, can help me to distinguish the word better. Also, a lot of times, a word in the target language might not be directly translated to a single word in my native tongue, instead, it might be translated as a concept, a series of words, etc. Thus, it is also very important to be aware of that, and pay attention to the collocations words of the target language.