Semantic essay

Our language is composed by many words and each word has a meaning. The study of the meaning of those words is called semantic. John I. Saeed defines semantic as “… the study of the meanings of wordsand sentences…” (Saeed, 1997).
With this definition we can think that in the study of semantic we can find terms as synonyms, antonyms, homophones and more. We use those terms in education,especially when we teach a first or second language. We can use the semantic with other studies or sciences like grammar, phonology or pragmatic. With this idea Saeed says: “As our original definition ofsemantics suggests, it is a very broad field of inquiry, and we find scholars writing on very different topics and using quite different methods, though sharing the general aim of describing semanticknowledge. As a result, semantics is the most diverse field within linguistics. In addition, semanticists have to have at least a nodding acquaintance with other disciplines, like philosophy andpsychology, which also investigate the creation and transmission of meaning. Some of the questions raised in these neighboring disciplines have important effects on the way linguists do semantics.” (ibid). So,using together different sciences and disciplines we can get an excellent advantages in teaching.
We think we can explain the use of semantic in teaching with a practical case: Imagine that you areteacher and you are going to teach the vocabulary of the topic “animals”. So you should know the meaning of each word and the students maybe don’t know the meaning of all or some words. So you can usea semantic map. Semantic mapping is a semantic strategy that can be used in all disciplines to demonstrate the relationship between words or ideas (in this case, the relation of the vocabulary thatyou’re going to teach of the topic “animals”). When teaching vocabulary explicitly, it can be used as tool for students to discover the relationships between vocabulary words. As semantic mapping...