Premium
An Investigation of Reading Strategies Applied by American Learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language
Author(s) -
LeeThompson LiChun
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
foreign language annals
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.258
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1944-9720
pISSN - 0015-718X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2008.tb03326.x
Subject(s) - reading (process) , linguistics , chinese as a foreign language , argumentative , vocabulary , grammar , reading comprehension , psychology , foreign language , process (computing) , computer science , mathematics education , philosophy , operating system
Minimal research has been conducted in reading Chinese as a second/ foreign language (CSI/CFL). In an effort to further the understanding of the reading process, this study, utilizing think aloud and retelling procedures, focuses on the identification of strategies that American university students applied to read Chinese texts (narrative and argumentative), and the difficulties encountered when processing texts for meaning. Also it examines whether Bernhardt's constructivist model can account for the reading process of the CFL learners at the intermediate proficiency level. The results show that the CFL readers employed bottom‐up and top‐down processing strategies, that their difficulties were pertinent to vocabulary, orthography, grammar, and background knowledge, and that Bernhardt's reading model could account for the reading process of CFL learners with minor modification.