Lexical disambiguation during reading comprehension in English as a foreign language

The aim of this study is to analyze lexical disambiguation during reading comprehension in English as a foreign language (EFL). It is known that in order to disambiguate a word the reader usually relies on the context, thus, the research is theoretically based on the definition of context, and counts on a lexical theory named Lexical Quality Hypothesis (HQL) that explains how the characteristics of a word (phonology and semantics, for example) are a fundamental part of reading comprehension. This study integrates a larger project still in progress, however, a case study is presented in order to analyze the ambiguity in the words record and track in different contexts of use. Preliminary results show that the characteristics of words, as well as the different types of context, are not unrelated to the phenomenon of disambiguation, although the reader is not always aware of the need to disambiguate even he/she understands what was read.