Chinese synonyms have long been valued by language researchers. Because they are difficult to distinguish and are numerous, they are not only a challenge for Chinese language teachers, but also a major learning difficulty for Chinese language learners. This study focused on the synonyms exercises in the intermediate textbook Modern Chinese IV to explore the learners' errors. It collected homework answers from thirty-four intermediate learners and screened out words with learners' error rates of more than 25%, treating them as synonyms that are likely to cause confusion among learners, and then designed morphemic analysis teaching activities for incorrect words, taught the students who entered the course, and finally evaluated the effectiveness.
Research results show that morpheme teaching can help learners distinguish synonyms, but the teaching of grammar and collocation words must still be taken into consideration. Teaching methods that use morphemes to explain meanings, supplemented by grammatical and pragmatic functions, can enable learners to master synonyms more comprehensively. In addition, this study also found that some of students' errors stem from cognitive differences in the context of the exercise questions. Therefore, when designing teaching, full consideration should be given to context design and the way in which relevant information is provided.
The main purpose of this study is to understand the errors made by foreign intermediate learners on synonyms in the Modern Chinese IV textbook. It is expected that through morphemic analysis teaching can help learners quickly distinguish synonyms and then use them. It is also hoped that the research results can be provided to intermediate Chinese teachers as a reference for teaching synonyms.
