During the process of reading Chinese books, you may often see the words批评and批判which are applied to express the meaning of criticizing and can function as noun and verb. However, as a matter of fact, there are some differences between them need to make clear so that to understand and use correctly.

When being used as verb, 批评means to raise some suggestions about the other’s faults or mistakes like 批评别人and自我批评. The point needs attention when you study Chinese is to point out the mistakes and ask them to correct and the objects are usually general mistakes. As a noun, it emphasizes the opinions and suggestions put forward.

However, if you use 批判, the situations are more serious because it is to criticize the wrong thoughts or actions like 批判丑恶现象. The systematical analysis need to be processed before you negate and 批判the others. Accordingly, the objects are mostly the words expressing the serious mistakes or bad thoughts.

Another group of words you need to study are 偏向and倾向 which are to show certain tendency. 偏向usually carries the meaning of supporting one side without principle. You can feel the meaning in the sentence裁判偏向红队. When being used as noun, it represents a kind of incorrect tendency.

When Chinese people use the word倾向, they usually mean to tend to do something like 倾向革命. Teachers in Mandarin language courses in China may emphasize it is a kind of tendency when functioning as noun such as 思想倾向and理论倾向.

If the students think it is difficult to tell apart the meanings, they can take the emotional coloring into consideration. 偏向often carries derogatory sense while 倾向is a neutral term. In addition, the preposition 于is needed after 倾向to lead the objects. For 偏向, the typical example is孩子在外边发生了矛盾后，父母总是偏向自己的孩子.