Reading Strategies Used by Advanced Korean and Chinese Esl Graduate Students: a Case Study

_______________________ Research in second language acquisition and reading in particular indicate that certain literacy skills transfer across languages. This study examines the reading strategies used by advanced Korean and Chinese ESL learners. Particular attention is devoted to how word recognition and processing skills developed in learners’ native languages (L1) may influence the type of strategies used in determining meanings of unfamiliar words when reading in English (L2). Given that Korean is an alphabetic language and Chinese is an ideographic language, we hypothesize that Korean ESL learners would generally use phonological processing strategies, while Chinese ESL learners would generally use visual-orthographic processing strategies. Six graduate-level students, three from each language background, were asked to read two different texts. Through oral recall, structured interviews, and questionnaire of reading strategies, we examine the kinds of strategies used and the level of comprehension achieved by the participants. Findings confirm the hypothesis that Korean ESL learners tend to rely on phonological, while Chinese ESL learners tend to rely on visualorthographic strategies when reading English texts. The learners’ English language proficiency, however, may be a more important factor contributing to the level of L2 reading comprehension achieved rather than the strategies used. ________________________ Introduction This study examines the reading strategies used by advanced Korean and Chinese ESL learners when reading academic texts. We focus on the kinds of strategies used by each group of learners and examine the characteristics of the strategies preferred by each group of students. We explore the possibility that certain strategy preferences are effects of the transfer of processing skills developed in L1 and that the differences in processing skills may lead to different levels of comprehension. Although scholars in the field have studied the effects of transfer on decoding skills with participants of different L1 backgrounds, relatively little research has examined the influence of transfer on reading comprehension, particularly the comparative effects of different L1s on comprehension. This study is an attempt to address this gap in the field.