The word is the smallest unit of sound and meaning which can be used independently in the language. The understanding of the written form was on the base of the understanding of the meaning of the words. It is well known that vocabulary plays an important role in the reading comprehension. Many foreign students in HSK preparation programs in China know that the reading comprehension will not carried on if one does not know some certain key words in the passage. Thus, the accumulation of the words is a key content in the process of reading comprehension. The students should expand the vocabulary to carry on the reading comprehension smoothly.
The main focus of the reading comprehension is the understanding of the texts. Reading and understanding of the meaning of the texts are the main activities held in the class. The teaching of the words in the reading class should focus on the discrimination of the words. That is to say, the teachers who teach Mandarin language have no need to tell the complete usages of the words. Thus, one point of the reading tasks is the repletion of the new words.
Specifically, several aspects should be paid attention to in the teaching of words in the reading class. Let’s see the aspects one by one. The first aspect is the discrimination of the Chinese characters. The teaching of the aspect is to make the students know the meaning of the new words according to the characters and forms of the new words. The second aspect is the morpheme analysis. It is known that the morpheme analysis is one of the essential skills to learn new words. The third aspect is the relation between synonyms and antonyms. This kind of learning new words takes advantage of the relation in the semantic field. Then the understanding of some words will become easier. The fourth aspect is translation. Some abstract words may be translated into the counterpart of the students’ mother tongue. The fifth aspect is the context. The context helps to make the students understand the meaning and usage of the new words.
Other methods like the displaying of the real objects and presenting pictures are also used in the teaching of words. The teachers should also pay attention to the features of the language learning during different periods.