Reading Academic Vocabulary Practice Test

This item is about a word relationship where the spelling stays the same but the pronunciation and meaning differ. The term for that is homograph: a word that looks identical to another on the page, yet carries a different sense and is spoken differently. For example, lead as a verb meaning to guide is pronounced /liːd/, while lead as the metal is pronounced /lɛd/. Similarly, read in the present tense sounds like /riːd/ but in the past tense sounds like /rɛd/, even though the spelling is the same. The other words—describing, positioning, or referring to a problem—do not name this relationship between words with the same spelling but different meanings and pronunciations, so they don’t fit.