New lexical unities in academic texts. Difficulties for their reading comprehension

Abstract

The objective of this research was to analyze reading comprehension problems of university students when they find new lexical acquisitions in Spanish texts and the strategies they apply in order to solve comprehension difficulties regarding neologisms. The instrument used to data included a survey applied to five groups of university students from mathematics, engineering, languages, Hispanic letters and pedagogy. Among the most relevant conclusions from the analysis and discussion of the results obtained, we have: difficulties to understand the new terms, lack of a specialized updated dictionary to clear up their doubts, semantic confusion when neologisms are loans from another language, and comprehension problems when neologisms introduced do not follow the linguistic constrains of Spanish word formation.