Measuring knowledge of words with multiple meanings

Abstract

When reading or listening to English, we encounter many words, most of which are high-frequency, polysemous words. Due to their polysemous nature, not knowing one particular meaning of a high-frequency word may prevent learners from understanding the wider contexts. Therefore, it is necessary to know whether learners have knowledge of multiple meanings of one word, however, there is no universally accepted way to measure knowledge of words with multiple meanings. With this in mind, the current paper looks at the difficulties of measuring learners’ knowledge of polysemous words and describes ongoing research on this topic.