Problems of Language Learners in Understanding Polysemous Words

Learning polysemous vocabulary is one of the fundamental challenges in acquiring lexical competence in a second language. These words, which constitute a significant portion of natural discourse, possess a network of related meanings whose comprehension and processing pose considerable difficulties for language learners. The present study, through a systematic review of the existing literature within the framework of cognitive linguistics and vocabulary instruction, identifies and analyzes the most important obstacles in understanding polysemous words. The findings indicate that learners face challenges such as the dominance and early entrenchment of the primary or first-learned meaning, interference from first-language semantic patterns, inability to decode contextual cues to select the appropriate meaning, weakness in processing metaphorical and figurative meanings, and working memory limitations. Furthermore, the lack of exposure to diverse contexts in instructional materials exacerbates these problems. By synthesizing the results of previous research, this paper considers traditional single-meaning approaches ineffective and emphasizes the necessity of employing strategies based on radial semantic networks and metaphor awareness. Finally, practical guidelines are offered for curriculum designers and language teachers to facilitate the learning of polysemous words. The application of these findings can contribute to improving reading comprehension, more fluent language processing, and increasing learner autonomy in guessing word meanings from context.

کلیدواژه ها:

polysemy ، vocabulary learning ، second language ، reading comprehension ، language interference