Abstract
Words having multiple meanings cause difficulties in text comprehension because readers possibly interpret such words as the primary meaning even when the words are used as other meanings. The current study examined how Japanese EFL learners interpreted those words that were used as the secondary meanings in contexts when the participants knew the primary but not the secondary meanings. The results showed that there was no significant difference in the correct rate of interpreting homonyms between reading proficiency levels. However, the types of error they produced were different: the upper group wrote more answers that fitted the context than the lower group who stuck to the primary meanings even when they understood the target contexts. These results suggest that the better readers had greater flexibility in changing their interpretation to one that fitted the contexts, but the poor readers persisted in assuming the meanings they already knew and could not change their interpretation.
