Problems of teaching polysemantic vocabulary in a foreign language: a theoretical review

Introduction. This article presents a review of pedagogical approaches to teaching polysemantic vocabulary to foreign language learners. It considers research from linguistics, cognitive science, psycholinguistics, semantics, psychology, sociolinguistics, and computational linguistics, which is not pedagogically oriented in itself but is used here to extract educational implications and to develop recommendations applicable to foreign language vocabulary instruction. Goal. The purpose of the article is to identify the key difficulties in acquiring polysemantic vocabulary and to synthesize the results of interdisciplinary research in order to develop pedagogical solutions that promote effective learning. Materials and methods. The review was conducted through a systematic literature search using Google Scholar and international academic databases. Only peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters indexed in international academic databases were included. Each publication was evaluated in terms of the identified challenges in acquiring polysemantic words by foreign language learners and the pedagogical solutions proposed. Results and discussion. The review identified several key difficulties faced by this category of learners: fixation on the first meaning of a word, negative interlanguage interference, insufficient skills in dictionary use, difficulties in acquiring both literal and secondary metaphorical meanings, challenges in identifying meanings in context, dependence of word interpretation on collocations and register, and cognitive difficulties in lexical processing. Pedagogical solutions highlighted in the research demonstrate the effectiveness of an integrated approach that incorporates context, mnemonic techniques, combined explicit and implicit methods, and systematic vocabulary introduction. Conclusion. Teaching polysemantic vocabulary should be viewed as a holistic process in which cognitive, linguistic, and pedagogical insights are integrated to develop strategies for contextual interpretation and autonomous vocabulary learning. Such a systematic approach ensures more flexible and accurate mastery of polysemantic words, helps overcome interlanguage interference, and fosters the ability to transfer knowledge between literal and metaphorical meanings. In the long term, this opens possibilities for creating more effective learning materials and tasks oriented toward real-life language use.