(4) Word families. A word like grower is regularly derived from the verb, but is almost always premodified, and students need examples like "peach growers" and "sugar growers," and "chicken growers," if they are to actually use the word. The idea that you can "grow" chickens might surprise many students!
In general, the ways we mention opposites, synonyms, superordinates and word families are useful for grouping words, or establishing sense relations, but like all definition-based strategies don't really teach words for use. When our emphasis is on collocation, we might start out our explanation of better by saying, "Well, better is the comparative of good," or "Better is the opposite of worse," but we would go on to mention such exemplifications as "a better world / future / job" or expressions with verbs like "feel better" and "look better" and "get better" and "make something better," or modification with adverbs like, "a little / somewhat / quite / much / significantly better," etc.