Solving the Synonym Question on English Tests
One type of question encountered in many English tests is the “Synonym Question”, where students are asked to pick a synonym of a word out of a list of alternatives. For example:
- vexed (a) annoyed (b) amused (c) frightened (d) excited
(Answer: (a) annoyed) This program tackles these type of questions through an intelligent system that can learn to answer questions like this one. The system will approximate the semantic similarity of any pair of words. The semantic similarity between two words is the measure of the closeness of their meanings. For example, the semantic similarity between “car” and “vehicle” is high, while that between “car” and “flower” is low.