Technical University Students & Difficulties in Understanding Polysemes and Homonyms

The purpose of the study aimed at exploring reasons why technical university students have trouble understanding polysemes and homonyms. The data were collected through a questionnaire (see Appendix A) and the subjects’ assignments. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were utilized to analyze the data collected. The results of the questionnaire revealed that the primary reason why the chosen polysemes and homonyms were misinterpreted was that the subjects did not pay attention to words with different meanings in British English and American English. However, among the chosen polysemes and homonyms, the most difficult word to understand was a word with the same meaning in British and American English. The findings indicated that pseudo-familiarity was the primary reason that the subjects misinterpreted the 5 most difficult words to understand. In addition, being inattentive to how polysemes and homonyms were used in example sentences, and being unable to deal with words with figurative meanings were the other reasons that led to the subjects’ misinterpretation of the 5 most difficult words to understand. This study also shows that the biggest obstacle to the comprehension of chosen polysemes and homonyms was not related to the misinterpretation of the most difficult word to understand. Pseudo-familiarity could stem from having no concept of collocation and lacking knowledge about grammar.