Developing a vocabulary learning system with near-synonyms and similar-form words

Various vocabulary learning systems have been developed to assist students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in acquiring the knowledge of vocabulary. By using the electronic dictionary, people only acquire vocabularies on a superficial. Most corpus-based system focuses on lexical explanation, such as giving synonyms and antonyms. Only a few studies have attempted to use lexical structures. However, these systems do not take into consideration students of EFL who emphasized English words recognition, such as Chinese students. Therefore, the near-synonyms and similar-form (NSSF) words are difficult for them to learn. In this study, we propose a system to assist students of EFL in learning the NSSF words. Results of a pilot study showed that students regarded this NSSF word learning system to be of great assistance in learning English vocabulary. This encourages us to promote the NSSF words learning system to students of EFL in other countries.