| This study examines how learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) across three different proficiency levels use top-down, bottom-up, and sociocultural reading strategies and investigates reading challenges that these learners encounter from their own and their teachers' perspectives. The theoretical framework of this study is the Model of Foreign Language Literacy (Kern, 2000), which emphasizes the importance of sociocultural aspects, which have been neglected in this field. In this study, which adopts a mixed-methods approach, 137 CFL university students participated in a Survey of L2 Chinese Reading Strategies, of whom 22 participated in think-aloud protocols and follow-up interviews. Also 11 CFL teachers participated in interviews.;The results showed three main findings. First, CFL learners overall reported most frequent use of bottom-up strategies followed by top-down strategies and sociocultural strategies in that order. Among the subcategories of bottom-up strategies, problem-solving strategies were reported to be used the most frequently, followed by orthography strategies and support strategies. Second, CFL learners overall adopted multiple strategies when reading texts, but the higher the proficiency of CFL learners, the more selectively and strategically they applied reading strategies. Third, CFL learners overall thought that vocabulary issues were the main source of their reading difficulties, while teachers observed other types of reading challenges such as problems with sentence patterns, insufficient motivation, and lack of academic literacy. Based on the results, the discussion of implications focuses on bringing multiple-strategy instruction into L2 Chinese reading classes, teaching CFL learners to apply reading strategies effectively, and helping CFL learners to overcome their reading difficulties. |
