For those foreign learners who show great interest in learning Chinese language, I think the best place to learn Chinese is to attend Chinese school because teacher can explain many things in detail. When it comes to the Chinese words, teachers have their own techniques to explain. Let’s see how the teachers do in Chinese teaching classes. Among so many ways of explaining words, the most direct one is the direct-version method. It is a method of using pictures or real objects to show the meaning directly for those students who learn Mandarin. For examples, if you want to explain “杯子”, you can just show the cup. If you explain “龙”, all you can do is to show a picture with Chinese dragon.

This method is very beneficial for students to study Chinese because the meanings are related with the objects directly and avoid the explaining process from the native language to the target language, thus promoting students master the meaning and application of the words directly.

Another effective way is explain by exampling. All nouns and verbs can be classified into two types, the concrete and the abstract. The former type like “人、书、桌子、吃、喝” can be explained by the demonstration method. However, the abstract words like “帮助、勇气、回忆” are not easy to explain by this way. Therefore, exampling is a relatively good method to deal with this type of words to deepen students’ impression when they learn Chinese language. When teachers teach Mandarin language, they often meet some similar words. For these words, we can explain by way of replacement. Some words have similar meaning but used in different situations. But we can explain the meaning by replacing. “坐出租车” actually means “打的” in oral language and “移动电话” is “手机”.

We know that the unit in Chinese language is the syllable, every syllable is written as a character. The characteristic of Chinese language is that most words are compound words consist of two or more than two morphemes. We come up with the way of splitting to help students learn Chinese in China on the basis of this feature of Chinese words.

After splitting the words, we can learn the meaning of new words by analyzing the relationship between the morphemes. Here are two typical examples often listed in Mandarin learning courses. For the word “机票”, it is made up of “机（飞机）” and “票（票据、凭证）”. The word “开关” is composed of “开（打开）” and “关（关闭）”. By this way, we can guess the meaning of the words by splitting and analyzing the meaning of the morphemes. During the process of teaching Mandarin, we often use the method of induction. According to the characteristics of the forms or something else, we can summarize the words have the same features into the same type. When you go Chinese language school to learn Chinese, you will see this method often taught by teachers.

For instance, if the lesson appears the new words like “把、机票、乘、办理、登、手续、行李、托运、登机牌、装、掏、钥匙、硬币、空姐、机舱．．．．．．”. We can classify them into three types according to the part of speech. The preposition “把”, the nuns ” 机票、手续、行李、登机牌、钥匙、硬币、空姐、机舱” and the verbs “乘、办理、登、托运、装、掏”. Of course, we can also classify by others standards.

According to the grammar relationship between the words, we can explain words by ways of collocation. InMandarin language courses in China, we often find some words to collocate to help students to remember the meaning and understand the language environment. For example, the word “极了” can be collocated like “好吃极了” and “得意极了”.

Last but not least, we can explain the words by telling a story. This method often used to teach learners who study in China when they meet the traditional Chinese set phrases. Most set phrases in Chinese languagehave certain background stories, so explain this kind of words by telling a story will deepen the understanding of the words. In short, all seven beneficial methods to explain new words are explained in detail and with examples. Actually, there are more methods can be used to explain the meaning of the words. Teachers should explore more when teaching.