Volume 05 Issue 06-2024
19
CURRENT RESEARCH JOURNAL OF PEDAGOGICS
(ISSN
–
2767-3278)
VOLUME
05
ISSUE
06
Pages:
19-26
OCLC
–
1242041055
Publisher:
Master Journals
ABSTRACT
This article explores the theoretical foundations of teaching words with opposite meanings in primary mother tongue
education, emphasizing cognitive knowledge, the creation of a cognitive-linguistic environment, and ensuring mutual
understanding within a language-speaking community. It reveals the peculiarities of words with opposite meanings
and promotes various methods to develop creative thinking in primary school students. The psychological and
pedagogical conditions necessary for students' acquisition of antonyms and the development of their speech skills
are thoroughly analyzed. Additionally, the article highlights the implementation of mother tongue education,
considering children’s perceptual processes, cognitive testing activities, and psychological
states.
KEYWORDS
Cognitive knowledge, language, thinking, words with opposite meanings, linguocognitive approach, linguistic units.
INTRODUCTION
Language is indispensable for understanding the
world. Linguistic tools
—
words, phrases, sentences,
and their combinations
—
facilitate the comprehension
of things, events, and realities, thereby forming ideas
in students' minds. Each word names known entities,
and nameless objects are rare within the human-
discovered world. In early stages, children may know
words but struggle to associate them with
corresponding objects. They recognize the word but
fail to grasp its meaning, preventing a connection with
real-world realities. Words not only name and define
but also encapsulate ideas.
The linguocognitive approach to examining the lexical-
semantic system in language does not create a
Research Article
THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF LEARNING WORDS WITH
OPPOSITE MEANINGS IN ELEMENTARY MOTHER TONGUE CLASSES
Submission Date:
June 09, 2024,
Accepted Date:
June 14, 2024,
Published Date:
June 19, 2024
Crossref doi:
https://doi.org/10.37547/pedagogics-crjp-05-06-04
Gulruhsor Xusanova
Fergane state university, Uzbekistan
Journal
Website:
https://masterjournals.
com/index.php/crjp
Copyright:
Original
content from this work
may be used under the
terms of the creative
commons
attributes
4.0 licence.
Volume 05 Issue 06-2024
20
CURRENT RESEARCH JOURNAL OF PEDAGOGICS
(ISSN
–
2767-3278)
VOLUME
05
ISSUE
06
Pages:
19-26
OCLC
–
1242041055
Publisher:
Master Journals
separate worldview; rather, it focuses on words that
draw researchers' attention. This approach analyzes
not the properties of linguistic tools but how
individuals reflect the objective world in their minds
using these tools, and how they attempt to employ
them in speech. According to numerous researchers in
this field, representing the world through language is a
defining aspect of Homo sapiens' thinking, shaping the
cognitive
processes
that
children
master.
Understanding
the
principles
of
knowledge
categorization requires considering the specific
features of natural language. While language and
thinking are distinct phenomena, they are the core
objects of linguocognitive research, functioning as an
inseparable unit.
Creating a cognitive-linguistic environment to ensure
mutual understanding among a community of
speakers is evident in the uniqueness of antonyms. The
universal laws of thinking, particularly scientific
thinking,
apply
rigorously
to
cognitive
and
communicative processes. Elementary school students
perceive dominant contrasts such as right-left for
visual appearance, big-small for size, black-white for
color, light-dark for symbol, sweet-bitter for taste, hot-
cold for temperature, and heavy-light for weight.
These antonyms are fundamental contradictions in the
universe model and, when learned during children's
active mental development stages, significantly
enhance intellectual functionality in the perception
process.
Literature Review.
Since ancient times, people have been fascinated by
the concepts of conflict and contradiction. Aristotle
attempted to differentiate between
“contradiction”
and “conflict” According to him, a key characteristic of
contradiction is the presence of an intermediate term
between two opposing phenomena, whereas conflict
lacks such an intermediate concept. Despite extensive
study, linguistics has yet to develop a universally
accepted definition of antonyms. Theoretical literature
on words with opposite meanings presents numerous
ideas for defining this lexical phenomenon, with the
primary concept of contradiction underpinning
antonyms. [V.A. Ivanova 1
982, 6] concludes that “the
concept of words with opposite meanings reveals the
semantics of antonyms”.
The contradictions perceived by humans contribute to
the crystallization of a basic, yet integrated and
ordered system from chaotic signals, forming the
cognitive experience based on the perception of the
reflected world without direct means [Popova ZD,
Sternin IA 2007, 36]. [Lyons 1978, 485] identified
“words with opposite meanings as one of the most
important semantic relations in the language”.
Antonyms are evaluated as a lexical-semantic category
and as a linguistic universal arising from human mental
activity.
The evolution of society and human thought has led to
various new trends, including neuropsychology, which
emerged to explore the characteristics of human
thinking. According to [Demyankov 1994, 17], human
behavior is linked to neuronal activity levels. From the
moment humans recognized their unique position
among living beings, they have pondered questions
such as: How is human thought formed? How does the
thought process occur? How does the human mind
perceive and reproduce information about the world?
Not only philosophy, logic, psychology, and biological
sciences, but also cognitive linguistics, seek answers to
these questions.
A child's success in education depends on their level of
cognitive interest. If a child does not understand the
purpose of the material or lacks the desire to
understand
it,
teaching
becomes
impossible.
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OCLC
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According to A. K. Markova, interest involves complex
personality formation linked to various motivational
processes. Cognitive interest is a primary motive in
educational activity, serving as both a tool and a goal
of the educational process. When considering the
psychological and pedagogical basis for forming the
concept of antonyms in elementary school students, it
is essential to acknowledge that children's cognitive
processes
—
thinking,
attention,
memory,
and
perception
—
are not fully developed. Pedagogical
activities should focus on developing personal qualities
that collectively enhance individual growth. The
analysis of mother tongue education content shows
that organizing language education during this period
based on cognitive-pragmatic methods expands
students' knowledge practically and theoretically,
fostering their thinking skills.
METHODOLOGY
Human thinking is inextricably linked with language;
every thought develops in connection with speech. The
clarity of oral and written expression directly reflects
the depth and precision of the underlying thought. It is
well-known that preschool children's thinking is
predominantly visual. Even in the 1st and 2nd grades,
the mental activity of young schoolchildren resembles
that of preschoolers. Consequently, educational
material in primary classes is primarily presented
visually during this period. Pupils of this age often
evaluate objects and situations based solely on
external characteristics. Their conclusions are drawn
from visual perceptions rather than logical arguments,
relying on the connection between judgment and
received information.
Students’ generalizations often involve clearly
perceived features and characteristics of objects and
events. The nature of elementary school students'
thinking evolves from the 1st to the 3rd grade through
systematically conducted educational activities. As
students progress, the amount of analytical
knowledge
requiring
deep
cause-and-effect
relationships between concepts, facts, and events
increases. By the 3rd grade, students understand
gender-species
relations
between
individual
characteristics of concepts. They analyze judgments by
classification, mentally compare parts, identify main
ideas, and develop them consistently, reaching
generalizations of specific things.
This gradual shift from visual and figurative thinking to
higher-order thinking marks significant development.
By the end of primary school, students exhibit
increased research activity in their cognitive processes.
At this stage, their research activity is characterized by
increased independence and critical thinking.
Independent thinking enables children to control their
thought
processes:
setting
research
goals,
hypothesizing cause-and-effect relationships, and
evaluating known facts from new perspectives.
Human thinking inherently relies on cause-and-effect
reasoning. Throughout life, people create models of
situations, building understanding. Pupils at the active
stage of reasoning can identify main ideas, combine
them into coherent mental pictures, and progress to
higher levels of thinking, developing judgment and
reasoning. These skills facilitate the transition from
logical to creative thinking.
Different methods should be employed to develop
creative thinking in elementary school students. When
determining the psychological and pedagogical
conditions for students' acquisition of antonyms and
their usage skills, it is crucial to consider their
perception
process,
cognitive
activity,
and
psychological state in mother tongue education. The
more developed a child's perception, the faster they
understand words, meanings, and combinations.
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ISSUE
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OCLC
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1242041055
Publisher:
Master Journals
Perception development should be integrated into
various activities for younger schoolchildren. It is
known that the perception of 1st and 2nd graders is
often imperfect and superficial.
Elementary students frequently make mistakes in
understanding and distinguishing the meanings of
complex and unfamiliar words, as well as in their
speech usage. They may confuse letters, words with
similar styles or pronunciations, or images of similar
things. Often, these distinctions are accidental, as
children at this age struggle to differentiate between
important and unimportant concepts. To resolve the
conflict between young students' concrete-figurative
thinking and the abstract nature of linguistic concepts,
it is essential to foster abstract thinking. Teachers must
recognize the importance of practical work in
students' mastery of linguistic concepts.
The process of mastering linguistic concepts is long
and complex, comprising four stages:
1.
Analysis of linguistic material.
2.
Summary of characteristics.
3.
Forming a definition of the concept.
4.
Concretization
of
language
concept
teaching.
To address these tasks, educational electronic school
dictionaries created by teachers can serve as valuable
didactic materials. These dictionaries, tailored to
elementary school mother tongue textbooks, help
students grasp linguistic concepts effectively. The
accompanying pictures aid in developing cognitive
thinking and speech skills, facilitating the identification
of antonyms.
For example:
WET-DRY DIRTY-CLEAN YOUNG-OLD
By comparing side-by-side contrasting images,
students can more easily understand that words
describing different adjectives, such as dirty-clean,
good-bad, and young-old, are semantically opposite to
each other. A cognitive task is determined by using
pictures and asking questions to identify antonyms.
Combining antonym pairs, which is considered a lexical
concept, helps develop lexical skills in students.
Antonyms are a universal phenomenon in language,
playing a significant role in children's speech and
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thinking. Learning antonyms during mother tongue
education activates children’s vocabulary and
improves their language use, thereby increasing their
linguistic competence.
As primary school students advance to higher grades,
they will need to master perception techniques, learn
to observe and listen attentively, and distinguish
important features of objects. Words play a crucial role
in developing voluntary perception and attention in
students. For first graders, words initiate the process
of perception without the need for images. From the
1st grade, children begin to analyze an object when it is
named. For example, when asked about the
differences between a wardrobe and a TV, they might
describe them as big and small, respectively. This
practice encourages detailed analysis. While students
in grades 1-2 require visualization to understand oral
material, this need diminishes significantly by grades 3-
4. During this period, the role of words in the child’s
perception evolves. The perception of 1st and 2nd
graders is characterized by emotionality, as they
perceive the symbolic properties of words and objects
more vividly. Visual aids are bright, lively, clearer, and
better received. However, teachers should also strive
to develop students’ perception in less vi
sually
stimulating ways.
In elementary grades, theoretical information about
words with opposite meanings, as well as other lexical
and grammatical groups, is not provided. Instead,
practical work with antonyms and observations on
them help form the concept of antonyms in children.
The system of practical exercises with antonyms
consists of the following elements:
Identifying words with contradictory meanings in
readable texts and explaining the contradiction.
Performing exercises involving antonyms and
encouraging their active use.
Work with antonyms begins with the analysis of literary
texts, followed by the inclusion of special tasks in
mother tongue textbooks. Through analyzing
language units, students learn and remember
previously unknown antonyms. Regular repetition of
antonyms and providing examples help students retain
these words in their memory. By processing antonyms
through completing tasks, students begin to use the
acquired words in new speech situations. For example,
a task for 3rd graders might involve finding antonyms
in given sentences and filling in a table.
Examples of such tasks include:
“It suddenly got cold, the dog has no blanket”
“A lazy person eats by hiding, a hardworking person
eats by finding” (proverb).
“A friend wants to do good,
and an enemy wants to do
evil”
“We go to school a short way”
Hot
Tall
Lazy
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OCLC
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Publisher:
Master Journals
Friend
It's long
If such processes are often conducted by the teacher,
the development of cognitive processes in elementary
grades will be faster.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Starting from the 2023 academic year, the new edition
of elementary school mother tongue textbooks is
structured into several parts. These include names,
sentences and their types, sentence structure, speech
and its types (oral and written speech), text and the
difference between text and sentences, text
composition (1st grade in part 1, 2nd grade in part 2),
vocabulary and explanatory dictionaries (grade 2 in
part 2), and polysemous words (grade 2 in part 2). Topic
19 of the 2nd-grade mother tongue textbook provides
a brief and theoretically simple definition of antonyms
for students: “For example, novvot is sweet, and
garmdori is bitter”
Following this description, students are given Exercise
6. Students are tasked with explaining the meaning of
these proverbs, writing words with opposite meanings
next to each other, and identifying antonyms as
examples (Grade 2 mother tounge, p. 76).
The teaching of words with opposite meanings in
schools should be methodically explained, integrating
modern approaches focused on the individual,
practice, and systematic activity. Words expressing
conflict are not only powerful stylistic tools but also
help students visualize the world in terms of different
conflicting concepts more clearly and figuratively.
To explain the law of contradiction and the nature of
antonyms to elementary school students, it is essential
to teach logical thinking through exercises on
conflicting words, comparing, and contrasting their
meanings. An analysis of primary grade mother tongue
textbooks reveals that students are taught antonyms
mainly through various tasks and exercises on lexical
materials.
One challenge faced by teachers when explaining
antonyms to elementary school students is the scarcity
of exercises designed to activate antonyms in primary
language textbooks, which do not meet modern
language acquisition requirements. Despite this, the
need to teach students the lexical richness of their
mother tounge is evident, as it closely relates to the
development of their thinking style. The exercises
provided in the textbooks gradually help students
understand the essence of antonyms and the active
role of contradiction in lexical antonyms.
Furthermore, antonyms in mother tongue textbooks
positively affect children's learning and understanding
of the subject. In the mother tongue curriculum,
students begin to understand the meanings of
antonyms, develop basic grammatical concepts about
them, and learn to identify, contrast, and effectively
use antonyms in speech.
The learning of such language units for students
continues consistently in other forms of teaching. The
new textbooks for elementary school students reflect
all the features of the mother tongue. However, the
analysis of first-grade mother tongue textbooks shows
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VOLUME
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OCLC
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Publisher:
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that exercises and assignments for working with
antonyms are insufficient. Vocabulary assignments for
learning antonyms and reinforcing the topic are rarely
provided separately. Creating such dictionaries serves
as a progra
m to increase students’ vocabulary and
develop their thinking.
The incorporation of more exercises and assignments
focused on antonyms in mother tongue education can
significantly enhance students’ understanding and
usage of these important lexical units. This will not only
improve their language competence but also develop
their cognitive and analytical skills
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the study underscores the pivotal role of
words with opposite meanings in elementary mother
tongue education, highlighted through the analysis of
modern textbooks and pedagogical approaches. The
integration of words with opposite meanings exercises
in the curriculum serves as a critical methodological
tool, enhancing students’ lexical competence and
fostering their cognitive development. Despite
identified challenges such as the limited availability of
dedicated antonym exercises in primary language
textbooks, the significance of teaching these linguistic
concepts remains clear. words with opposite meanings
not only enrich stu
dents’ vocabulary but also deepen
their understanding of semantic relationships and
logical thinking processes.
The exploration of words with opposite meanings in
elementary education reveals their fundamental
contribution to language learning and cognitive
growth. By engaging with words with opposite
meanings, pupils not only grasp contrasting meanings
but also refine their ability to analyze and interpret
language nuances effectively. Moving forward, there is
a recognized need to augment the presence of words
with opposite meanings related activities in mother
tongue textbooks, ensuring comprehensive coverage
and alignment with contemporary educational
standards. This proactive approach will empower
educators to cultivate a robust foundation in language
skills among elementary school pupils, preparing them
for broader academic and social contexts where
linguistic proficiency is essential.
In essence, the incorporation of well-structured
antonym exercises holds promise for enhancing both
educational outcomes and the overall linguistic
competence of young learners.
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