Culture, Literacy, and L2 Reading

Abstract

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.