This article examines the relationship between cultural membership and individual language learning behavior, a relationship that has so far been addressed chiefly through questionnaire research aimed at documenting the learning styles of different cultural groups. Because such an approach does not illuminate the mechanisms by which culture influences learning, this article suggests an alternative approach that focuses on a narrower range of behavior-namely, L2 reading strategies-and a defined set of cultural practices having to do with literacy. The article reviews briefly the research on these two areas and then presents data on the strategies for English academic reading tasks used by two quite different groups of students: secondary school students in northern Nigeria and university graduates in China. The strategies that the two groups of students used were strikingly difference whereas the Nigerian students showed a marked preference for top-down methods of solving comprehension problems, the Chinese students reported a strong tendency to use bottom-up ones. These differing strategies are then related to the different language backgrounds of the two groups of students and to their different experiences of literacy. The article concludes that cultural background is an important factor in the formation of individual reading strategies but that this fact should not lead to a simple cultural determinism; individual variation must always be acknowledged, and so must the fact that both individuals and cultures may change in the very process of L2 learning.

This paper reports a series of longitudinal case studies designed to address the question of how language learners build their vocabularies. Students who were enrolled in an anthropology class were asked to record the words that caused them difficulty as they read their anthropology texts, and to write down, if they could, what they thought the words meant. The resulting lists are analyzed in terms of the kinds of words listed, the accuracy of the glosses, and the probable reasons for misinterpretation; the analysis is considered in relation to data collected in protocols and a translation task. The conclusions are that a range of strategies may be used for learning vocabulary, each involving liabilities as well as assets. Students need to be aware of the range so as to develop flexibility in their responses to unfamiliar words.

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In recent decades reading research has moved from predominantly quantitative work to more qualitative studies in which individual readers are observed in interaction with texts. Considerable differences have been found in the strategies employed by these readers, especially by those of different social and cultural backgrounds. These diverse strategies can be partly attributed to the different processes by which people learn to read and through the different ways in which they see written texts used in their own social environments; the contrasting situations and strategies of Japanese and Nigerian readers are used to illustrate the point. If teachers are to deal effectively with readers of various cultural backgrounds -as they must do in ESL and EFL classes -they need to know more about such contrasts; more work is therefore needed on the relationship between the literacy practices of cultural communities and the reading strategies of particular individuals.In the early 19OOs, when proponents of the infant science of psychology began to study reading, it was in the positivist belief that everything could be measured and, once measured, could be understood. In 1903, Edward Thorndike, one of the earliest scholars in the field who laid the foundation for much subsequent research, summarized his epistemology in 1903 thus:We conquer the facts of nature when we observe and experiment upon them. When we measure them we have made them our servants. (Quoted in Joncich, 1968, p. 282.) Consequently, he and other researchers devoted their energies to examining those characteristics of texts and of readers that could be counted.