1. Introduction
Recently, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers are in support of a socially informed framework for exploring language-related puzzles in the real world, considering that “methodologies, theories, and foci within SLA reflect an imbalance between cognitive and mentalistic orientations, and social and contextual orientations to language” (Firth & Wagner, 1997, p. 285). For instance, Pavlenko and Lantolf (2000) proposes “participation metaphor” (PM) to complement the traditional “acquisition metaphor” (AM), obliging us to view learning as a process of becoming a member of a certain community. Along the same vein, calls have been made for more reading research to move away from the tradition in which reading is narrowly defined as psycholinguistic processing skill (Gee, 2001) and in which researchers tend to investigate discrete reading variables (Bernhardt, 2005). On this ground, reading research falls short of providing satisfying explanations of L2 reader as a whole person moving constantly in culture and in time-space. With this in mind, this study aims to understand the L2 reader and his reading as situated in temporal, cultural, and social context.
The study is conducted in Taiwan, an EFL setting. In the past century, Taiwan witnessed several political upheavals, most of which have great impacts on its language use. For instance, the Japanese government launched a “Japanese only” campaign in Taiwan while colonizing the island from 1895 to 1945. In 1949, the Nationalist retreated from the Mainland China to Taiwan, established its political dominance in the given area, and later banned the use of any languages other than Mandarin Chinese. The language policy was not changed until Martial Law was lifted in 1987, which in a way revived the use of
Taiwanese language. Recently, under the influences of globalization, it has been recognized by most people in Taiwan that one needs to read in English at reasonably high levels of proficiency to achieve academic and professional goals. Situated in such ongoing historical and social changes, how does an EFL learner in Taiwan develop his reading? To explore the puzzles, the researcher employs life-story approach to track a Taiwanese senior reader’s literacy journey spanning several decades long. The purpose of the inquiry is threefold: to respond to the call for more first-person accounts of long-term L2 learning (Benson & Nunan, 2004), to escape from the predicament of L2 reading research which “actually know[s] relatively little about how people become good L2 readers,” (Grabe & Stoller, 2002, p. 2), and to have a better understanding of reading development beyond the learner’s early period (Alexander, 2005).
2. A social view of reading
An important social view of learning is in the concept of situated learning, proposed by Lave and Wenger in 1991. Central to the theory are the notions of “communities of practice” and “legitimate peripheral participation.” The significance of communities of practice lies in its shift of analytic focus from the individual as a learner to learning as participation of the social world. Meanwhile, the notion of legitimate peripheral participation is used to describe a process in which newcomers move toward full participation by mastering important knowledge and skills of a particular community of practice.
perspective on reading (Gee, 2001) has been proposed to situate reading in a broad perspective in which language is tied to embodied action in the material and social world. Joining Freire and Macedo (1987), Gee emphasizes that reading the word and reading the world are one and the same process. As “read” is a transitive verb, Gee argues, reading literacy must have something to do with being able to read a text of a certain type. Meanwhile, to read a text meaningfully requires one to have different types of background knowledge, use different skills, and process different levels of meaning that one can give to or take from a text. To be more specific, words and grammar of human language are not closed systems to be memorized. Rather, they are perspective-taking devices to map different social languages, say, the language of medicine, literature, or informal talk among friends. On this account, reading a certain type of text can not be learned only by instruction. Instead, one needs to acquire it in a “native-like” way, i.e., immersion in communities of practice as a member. Specifically, Gee (1996) announces: “one does not learn to read texts of type X in way Y unless one has had experience in settings where texts of type X are read in way Y” (p. 41). From the perspective of situated learning, it means a novice reader has to be socialized into a practice which oldtimers have already mastered so that the newcomer can learn to read in the native way of the communities of practice. For example, to learn to read about “light” in physics, one needs to be immersed in a specific community to experience and to comprehend the way of “light” as a bundle of waves of different wavelengths (Gee, 2001).
At this point, it is clear that reading is a social practice that one acquires by socialization. But “socialization into what” (Gee 2001, p. 719)? The answer is Discourses (with a
capital D), an inclusive notion used to be distinguished from discourse (with a little d ) in reference to language in use. The notion of Discourses has both social and historical dimensions. On the one hand, a Discourse is viewed as being-doing a certain type of social roles. Simply put, Discourse is some “identity kit” (Gee, 2001). Metaphorically speaking, each of us has a tool kit full of specific devices, such as ways with words, deeds, thoughts, values, actions, interactions, objects, tools, and technologies. These devices enable us to enact a specific identity and to engage in specific activities associated with that identity. For example, Sherlock Holmes uses different identity kit from what is used by Doctor Watson (Gee, 2001). That is, they have different Discourses on some level.
On the other hand, Gee distinguishes primary Discourses from secondary Discourses in expression of the temporal dimension. According to Gee (1996), primary Discourses are those to which people are apprenticed early in life during their primary socialization as members of particular families with their sociocultural settings. They are our first social identity. Secondary Discourses are those which we acquire when we enter the “public” world beyond our families. We take on new identities as members of various secondary Discourses, such as the army, job sites, business, professions, and the like. In our lifetime, we inevitably experience more than one Discourse. It is especially true for EFL learners, who are involved with more than one language. Based on Gee’s (2001) reading model, L2 readers may be perceived as multi-Discoursal learners, who cross borders between different social and historical Discourses. An individual reader therefore is not merely an individual; he is actually the meeting point of many socially and historically
defined Discourses. In this sense, his history of movement between Discourses can provide us a window to look into the interplay, or the lack thereof, between the reader and his context.
3. Methodology 3. 1. The participant
The participant was one of the interviewees of a larger project which recruited English readers via purposeful sampling to select informants on the basis of their relevance to research (Mason, 1996). Accordingly, the focal participant of this study met four pre-set participation selection criteria: (a) a Taiwanese in middle adulthood, (b) receiving primary and secondary education in Taiwan, (c) being a professional who is experienced in English reading, and (d) acknowledging that English reading is of great importance to his career development. For the sake of confidentiality, he was later referred to as Shuang-Shi, a pseudonym. When joining the study in 2007, Shuang-Shi was 60 years old. Noteworthy was that he had a reading history spanning more than three decades, involving multiple languages, and intersecting with various social contexts. His life story caught my eye immediately. “[B]ecause that entity is somehow unique [and] special,” (Nunan & Bailey, 2009, p. 48) I determined to choose him as the object of the present study.
Shuang-Shi was born in 1948. After he got his bachelor degree of pharmacy, he worked for a Japanese pharmaceutical company for a couple of years. Later, he was recruited by a governmental department to perform duties with respect to food and drug safety. In the
midst of his career, he went to Japan for further studies, obtained his doctoral degree in pharmacy, and returned to Taiwan to work for the same organization. At the age of 55, he retired from his post and began his teaching career as a full professor in a newly established department of a medical school in Taiwan.
3.2. Data collection and analysis
The study follows in the tradition of life-story research, which is defined as a narrative about a specific significant aspect of a person’s life in either oral or written form, which covers all or most of a life (Chase, 2005). The main tool for data collection was the interview protocol which was informed mainly by McAdams (1993) and Lu (2005). Interview questions were arranged into “Self Description,” “Landscapes of English Learning” “Landscapes of English Reading,” “Landscapes of English Reading for Professional Purposes,” and “Themes of the Stories.” Shuang-Shi received three life story interviews on December 21 of 2007 as well as January 11 and February 12 of 2008 respectively. The Mandarin-based interviews were audio-taped and transcribed. The verbatim was used as the main data source, together with the researcher’s reflective journal, which was used to “display the investigator’s mind processes, philosophical position, and bases of decisions about the inquiry” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p. 109).
To understand Shuang-Shi’s movement from one Discourse to another, the verbatim account was read repeatedly and discursively. Based on the verbatim, I wrote the life story of Shuang-Shi by means of linking his reading experiences in a temporal order, i.e., from his childhood, to school days, and finally to workplaces. The transcript in the story
was translated into English by the researcher. At the end of 2008, Shuang-Shi received his English-written life story and was invited to undergo member checking. It was agreed that the account was faithfully reported and the character was not misrepresented.
4. The reader’s life story
4. 1. A learner in a multilingual context
Shuang-Shi was the first son of his family located in Northern Taiwan. Shuang-Shi’s father had been to Japan for academic studies while Shuang-Shi’s mother, during the period in which Taiwan was under Japanese colonization, received Japanese education as a primary school student. On this account, Japanese language played a role of secret language in Shuang-Shi’s family. Whenever the parents wanted to bar the children from understanding certain issues, they conversed in Japanese.
In reflection, Shuang-Shi said his parents placed extreme emphasis on his education. For example, in order to tutor Shuang-Shi in person, his mother learned Mandarin phonetic symbols, which she did not have a chance to be instructed in her primary school days due to the language policy under Japanese colonization. In the summer vacations, she asked Shuang-Shi to memorize and recite the lessons of the textbooks which she borrowed from Shuang-Shi’s elder cousin. In this way, Shuang-Shi previewed what would be taught in the coming semester. The mother’s efforts in a way reflected the familial expectation of the academic success of the eldest son in the household. In brief, Shuang-Shi said, “My family wanted me to ‘ba shu du hao,1’” (2007/12/21) which means to devote oneself to
1 The literal meaning of the phrase is to read books well. The word shu refers to the book while du means
reading without any reservation.
4. 2. When English was instructed by a math teacher
Shuang-Shi’s English education was initiated by his father. In the summer prior to his junior high school days, his father tutored him English pronunciation. Shuang-Shi recalled the private education with a sophisticated smile: “My father read English words with very strong Japanese accent” (2007/12/21). In fact, Shuang-Shi’s junior high English teachers were no better than his father in regard to pronunciation.
Quite a few English teachers at that time were non-English majors. For example, my second-year English teacher in the junior high had been my math teacher. When he stepped into the first English class, we thought it was a mistake or some practical joke! (2008/2/12)
In the first two years of Shuang-Shi’s senior high, English courses were instructed by two overseas teachers, from Hong Kong and Indonesia respectively. The teachers’ idiosyncratic pronunciation made their lecturers clueless to Shuang-Shi. Shuang-Shi said his English learning in the high school days was “something of a mess” (2008/2/12). However, in spite of the constraint of language educators’ academic background, the milieu of English learning on the campus was surprisingly positive. Shuang-Shi noted:
My friends and I liked to test each other on difficult English lexical items found in the dictionary. We would interrogate one another the irregularly behaved
uncommon adjective suffix, it became an ideal target for the quiz among peers. (2008/2/12)
In the third interview, Shuang-Shi showed me the dictionary he had used in his senior high school days. The book was shelved in his research room. Its paper had yellowed with age. He explained that his first dictionary of the same edition was worn out and torn apart long time ago. The one in his hand once belonged to his younger brother. He said:
It cost 68 dollars. I remember the detail only because my mother did not agree to buy me a copy until I begged her a thousand times. Her reluctance to the purchase resulted mainly from the financial shortage. At that point, Taiwan was in an economically impoverished age. My family was pinched, too. I remember that my mom promised to buy me a watch on the condition that I excelled in the high school entrance exam. However, she did not fulfill her promise until I was already a second grader of the best high school she wanted me to go. (2008/2/12)
4.3. Collaborative handouts for “Original-Language Textbooks”
In 1967, via a notoriously competitive national examination called JCEE (Joint College Entrance Examination), Shuang-Shi was admitted to a five-year program of pharmacy department. In his college days, he read many Original-Language Textbooks.2 In
retrospection, Shuang-Shi showed his gratitude to his biology teacher in the college who eased his L2 reading. He recalled: “The professor taught only a few chapters of the big
2 The translation is borrowed from Huang (2006). The term is now commonly understood as books written
volume but he elaborated the text in his lecture; he interpreted it almost word by word. His meticulous account enabled me to read the textbook with full understanding” (2008/1/11). As for the other subjects, Shuang-Shi experienced numerous reading difficulties, which resulted mainly from his slow reading speed and ineffective word recognition. He said:
In the first place, English is not my native language. Moreover, each subject involves quite a few jargons. Understandably, the speed of my English reading was slow. I had the experience of finishing reading only two or three pages at the cost of one long night. (2008/1/11)
Thanks to the difficulty of English reading, Shuang-Shi and his classmates employed a popular compensating strategy in his time, i.e., making the so-called “student collaborative handouts” or gong bi in Chinese, which was once a common practice in the university campus in Taiwan. Shuang-Shi detailed what happened in his days:
In the summer vacation of my junior year, my class leader recruited about ten members to make handouts. I was one of them. We worked in his house like crazy. In the age with no access to the computer, we wrote on wax paper with a steel pen; we duplicated copies manually by oil ink. During the mealtime, we crowded at a big round table to eat food provided by the class leader’s supportive parents. (2007/12/21)
I was responsible for the subject of biochemistry. Since the biochemistry teacher’s instruction was drawn out from seven different textbooks, I bought all of them to facilitate my handout-making. At that time, pirated edition was allowed to circulate; hence, Original-Language Textbooks were affordable for a student like me. In practice, to arrive at good understanding, I first read the book chapters covered in the teacher’s lectures. Then I translated the contents from English into Chinese. I also wrote into the handouts relevant information recorded in the
textbooks but not touched upon by my teacher, assuming that the details could help my classmate reader to get a holistic picture of the topic. (2007/12/21)
After my classmates read the handouts I had made, some approached me for clarification or elaboration of the content. In this case, I would explain to them in detail, not getting tired of any repetition. If I could not give the private lesson fluently, I blamed myself for not reading the text thoroughly enough. On this account, I re-read the textbooks. The discursive process of handout making, peer instruction, and repeated reading facilitated the growth of both my L2 reading and my domain knowledge. (2008/1/11)
4.4. Attached to Japanese Annotated Pharmacopeias
Shuang-Shi worked in many different worksites after he was graduated from the medical college. In reflection, he admitted that self-initiated reading for professional purposes played an important role in his career:
I need to acquire knowledge of, say, food safety. I have to ascertain what additives under which circumstances are safe or harmful to human health. Although the American pharmacopoeia provides helpful information in this regard, it does not specify the reasons why certain chemical reactions occur. In contrast, the Japanese pharmacopoeia annotates detailed rationales. So I prefer using the Japanese
pharmacopoeia for self-learning. (2008/1/11)
Shuang-Shi mentioned more than once the advantages of the Japanese annotated pharmacopoeia. He even showed me one during the interview. He directed my attention to the page which annotated the method of sausage-making and the reasons for nitrite addition in the process. Shuang-Shi also pointed to the illustration of a particular molecular structure. He said such diagrams were of great help to his comprehension of the Japanese texts.
In the early 80s, Shuang-Shi attended a screening examination for government employees who intended to obtain financial aids to go abroad for further studies. In the oral test, the interviewer asked Shuang-Shi why he preferred Japan over the other countries. He answered, “I apply for the doctoral program in Japan mainly because I favor the Japanese annotated pharmacopoeia. I have been attached to the book since I was a college student” (2007/12/21).
4.5. A journal turned into English from Chinese language
curious about how he survived his studies in Japan, considering that he had received little formal Japanese language education prior to his four-year stay in Japan. To my surprise, he told me that the main language for his academic studies in Japan was English, not Japanese. In the classroom, the teacher taught in Japanese; the peers talked in Japanese; but they studied English texts. “An interesting picture emerged in my mind when he was describing the scene: Shuang-Shi discussed with his classmates about an article written in English; they talked sometimes in Japanese and sometimes in English” (Reflexive Journal, 2008/1/14).
Shuang-Shi finished his PhD program in 1985. Afterwards, he had worked in different governmental units. Before his retirement in 2002, he had been in Bureau of Food and Drug Analysis for quite a few years. The institution publishes a well-known scientific journal called Journal of Food and Drug Analysis (JFDA), based on an top-down order from the unit director. The main purpose, as reported by Shuang-Shi, was to make the bureau recognized by National Science Council (NSC) as a research institute so that it could apply for grants from NSC to enhance its research quality and diversity. Shuang-Shi noted:
What is worth mentioning about the journal is its language shift. The journal was first published in Chinese but later it called for English papers only, considering that English-written articles can be evaluated on the basis of the impact factor;3
which in turn can determine the journal to be included in the database of Science Citation Index or not. (2008/2/12)
The director’s approach turned out to be effective. The bureau was later defined as a research unit. Moreover, from 1996 to 2004, JFDA won the award of annual excellent scientific journal from NSC.
4.6. Between two professions stand high mountains
In 2002, Shuang-Shi retired as a government employee. In the same year, he was recruited by his almamater to teach in a newly established department. Shuang-Shi described his reading in the new workplace as follows:
When I joined the department, there were only two faculty members; each of us had to teach seven or eight subjects in one semester. In my case, I burned midnight oils to process English texts which I had never read before. The reading was awfully difficult in that most materials were from new branches of some academic discipline. Can you imagine that I even had to teach math for discipline-specific purposes! As the old saying goes, “Between two professions stand high
mountains.” Whenever I read for a new track of a discipline, I read with extremely pains. (2008/2/12)
In spite of the difficulties and strenuous efforts, Shuang-Shi maintained a positive attitude toward L2 reading. He accentuated, “English is a tool to update our knowledge pool” (2008/2/12). “We need English to broaden our horizon of knowledge in science and technology, considering that Western countries usually outperform the rest of the world in these domains” (2008/2/12). When inquired about his plan after his second retirement
within five years, Shuang-Shi answered with a grin:
I am thinking of writing books after my retirement. As the need to update knowledge persists, I have to sustain my L2 reading. Admittedly, learning new information via reading is painful; however, it never stops bringing me pleasure along the process. (2008/2/12)
5. Theoretical understanding of the story
Shuang-Shi’s narrative indicated that while socializing into Discourses, the reader, reading, and context interact intensively with each other in a dynamic and complex way. The interplays are to be discussed via three threads running through the story.
5.1. Familial and social supports to socialization into secondary Discourse
It is shown clearly from the narrative that Shuang-Shi’s parents made conscious efforts to help him align with school-based literacy in the secondary Discourse. Specifically, the parents subsumed their expectation in the phrase “bu shu du hao.” In Chinese, shu means books while du means to read. However, du shu has multiple meanings in the Chinese culture. In its narrow sense, du shu refers to the activity of reading but in its broad sense, it refers to academic studies or education. In the same vein, the reader (du shu ren) may also refer to the intellectual or the educated elite in the society.
The Chinese culture has long been noted for the characteristic that “[i]ndividual success…reflected positively not on individuals, but on families and clans” (Chen,
Warden, & Chang, 2005, p. 613). What is equally salient is that academic success in Chinese society usually refers to triumphs in the examination, which in one way or another is tied to du shu, be it book reading or school education. In this sense, when Shi’s parents made a request of ba shu du hao, they in effect scaffolded Shuang-Shi, a novice, to coordinate his energy to read/study to fit within the Chinese social configuration which prioritized literacy over many others. In practice, as experienced social members, Shuang-Shi’s parents gave assistance via tutoring at different points to initiate legitimate peripheral participation in secondary Discourses. Noteworthy is that surface forms such as pronunciation probably were not the main objects to be transmitted. The underlying purpose of the private education, instead, was to help the boy to negotiate with the situated meaning of du shu in the Chinese culture and to ease him into the school-based Discourse. Similarly, familial support to practices of secondary Discourse was also found in Shuang-Shi’s class leader’s parents—they provided space and meals to support the college kids’ mutual engagement in making student collaborative handouts, a literacy activity integral to college education in Taiwan at one time.
In brief, the narrative indicated that Shuang-Shi and his peers were situated in the culture which prioritizes academic literacy and regard academic success as a collective triumph. Reading, or du shu, therefore received high social values, which in turn mobilized the senior members in the society to lend support to youngsters’ socialization into the school-based Discourse via reading/learning.
Unlike what was mentioned in the previous section, Shuang-Shi’s account demonstrated that socializing into secondary Discourse involving L2 reading/learning was much more challenging, mainly because of severe lacks of L2 learning resources in the environment. The story recaptured an age in Taiwan in which EFL learners were positioned at an unfortunate side: the dearth of oldtimers to aid L2 learners’ legitimate peripheral participation and inaccessibility to modern technological supports (e.g., computer or internet) to facilitate L2 learning. Surprisingly, under such deprived situation, Shuang-Shi and his peers mobilized all possible resources to cope with the difficulties of English reading. For example, in their high school days, Shuang-Shi and his schoolmates made good use of dictionary and peer tests to initiate highly intensive self-learning. In addition, Shuang-Shi and his college classmates overcame reading challenges via student collaborative handouts and peer instruction. Furthermore, in his workplaces, Shuang-Shi initiated engagement in reading Japanese annotated pharmacopeias to increase his knowledge concerning food and drug safety. All these examples show Shuang-Shi is an active learner/reader regardless of his input-reduced environment.
Reminiscent of Shuang-Shi’s learning history characterized by active self-initiation is Gu’s (2003) research on two successful EFL learners in China as well as Gillett’s (1994) longitudinal study on six L2 learners. Like Shuang-Shi, Gu’s informants in China were situated in an EFL context which used to impose various constrains on L2 learning. However, the learners used rote strategies in an active and flexible way to achieve their academic success, despite these strategies are usually frowned upon by Western educators. Surprisingly, these context-deprived learners did not show negative attitude
toward L2 learning. Like Shuang-Shi, they reported paradoxically that they enjoyed learning despite the highly intensive labors on their part.
Similarly, when investigating the participants’ learning histories, Gillette found that negative learning experiences did not change the effective learners’ basic orientation, i.e., to value or not to value L2 study. It is therefore argued by Gillette that the goal to acquire L2 may outweigh disappointing learning; the goal influences the extent of efforts one makes and the success he may enjoy as a result in his L2 learning. This explains why Shuang-Shi can engage in L2 reading unflinchingly although reading tasks are reported in the narrative as painful, demanding, and intimidating as insurmountable mountains. Gillette’s argument also explains why L2 reading to Shuang-Shi and Gu’s (2003) participants can be painful and enjoyable at the same time.
Lantolf and Pavlenko (2001) argue that persistence on learning as such is evidence to show that readers/learners are human agents who can actively engage in constructing the terms and conditions of their own learning. As actors, learners/readers have human agency, namely “a relationship that is constantly constructed and renegotiated with those around the individual and with the society at large” (ibid, p. 148). Roebuck (2000) also detected learner’s agency when drawing on data from participants’ written recall protocols for a reading task. It was found that instead of being manipulated by the researchers’ intentions or the task instructions, the readers brought into the task their unique histories, goals, and needs. The finding demonstrates that the learners may avail themselves of different tools and strategies to respond to their environment in individual
and dynamic ways.
In the present study, Shuang-Shi and his peers also confirm that L2 readers/learners can construct their environment in unique ways to act according to their own intentions when true acquisition of L2 leading to full fluency in a Discourse is not possible. Gee (1996) names this “partial acquisition coupled with meta-knowledge and strategies to ‘make do’” (p. 147) as “mushfake Discourse,” (Mack, 1989, as cited in Gee, 1996) a term from prison culture meaning to make do with something less when the real thing not available. In the study, mushfake presents when Shuang-Shi made use of peer tests and the student collaborative handouts to overcome the challenges imposed by the disadvantageous learning context. As shown by the study, a significant part of Shuang-Shi’s ultimate success in socialization into L2 Discourse was his constructing a mushfake Discourse via his agency. The argument also holds for Gu’s and Gillette’s participants.
5.3. L2 reader answering to distant demands of external Discourse
Shuang-Shi’s L2 reading history is involved with three languages: Chinese, Japanese and English. In the narrative, it is clearly shown that they have competing interests. Specifically, in the higher education in both Taiwan and Japan, English language is the dominant language for the pursuit of disciplinary knowledge, as shown by the fact that Shuang-Shi opted for English but not Chinese or Japanese to read for academic purposes. The dominance of English is also confirmed by the language shift of JFDA. Examples like these show that English reading/writing has more currency in comparison with reading/writing in Chinese or Japanese in the trend of globalization.
It has long been recognized by Wood (2001) that “English is indeed the international language of science” (p. 71). For scientists to become successful, they have to read in English and write their works in English to increase the possibility to be read or cited, by not only readers who are native speakers but also those who are in the “outer circle” (ESL speakers), and the “expanding circle” (EFL speakers) (Kachru, 1995). As more and more scientific papers are available in English and more and more users decide to use scientific English, the value of English reading/writing keeps on the rise. Under this circumstance, regardless of his preference of Japanese language, Shuang-Shi had to respond to the need. Thus, he directed his energy to engage in English reading in alignment with the trend of globalization.
The language shift of JFDA and Shuang-Shi’s opting for English language demonstrate that that Discourse is not a static configuration; nor is it structurally independent. Rather, Discourse is connected to and influenced by broader constellations like global context of literacy. In other words, although residing in the local context, EFL readers/learners like Shuang-Shi are under remote influences. This explains why Shuang-Shi and his unit director needed to answer to “distant demands” (Brandt & Clinton, 2002, p. 351) of globalization, either by engaging in English reading or shifting the journal language from Chinese to the lingua franca.
6. Concluding remarks
reading history in Taiwan, which for the past decades has witnessed several political upheavals with impinges on its language use. The EFL reader’s constant movement from one Discourse to another opens a window for us to understand how reading develops in an ever-changing social context. It is shown from the study that Chinese culture supports school-based secondary Discourse socialization and therefore reading is endorsed in the EFL context. When it comes to L2 reading/learning, the socialization process is full of difficulties, mostly due to the lack of oldtimers of L2 in the context to assist the newcomers’ legitimate peripheral participation. Fortunately, the EFL learner, as a human agent, may avail himself reading tools and strategies to negotiate with the input-reduced context and rise to the challenges. Furthermore, it is also shown that Discourse is not a static configuration; an external Discourse as globalization might make demands on the local reader’s literacy practices as well.
As indicated by the reading history, the reader moves constantly in the temporal, cultural, and social context, thereby making the EFL learner’s reading development complex and dynamic. Although it may be presumptuous to derive pedagogical implications from this study, educators are encouraged to perceive reading as a social practice required for participations in a certain community, rather than view it as an isolated activity to retrieve autonomous meanings from texts. It is also incumbent upon teachers to share with their students the concept of social learning. Given that many EFL learners in Taiwan and China are used to examination-driven modes of learning (Chen, Warden, & Chang, 2005; Zhang, 2010), these readers are more likely to be textbound and confined by bottom-up language processing such as word-level decoding. It is therefore argued that EFL teachers
need to provide learners with opportunities to envision future reading/learning development. The awareness of goal and orientation may help the learners to defy hardships and labors of L2 reading. It also sustains lifelong learning, which is required to respond to the ongoing changes of the social context, both internal and external.
Finally, the story may have a fundamental influence on the ways in which we conceptualize second language reading research. Research to date has focused on reading variables, such as vocabulary learning and strategy use. These factors have been viewed largely as discrete and independent. However, as shown by this study, they are integral and dynamic dimensions tied up with contextual influences. This perspective is particularly fitting to the current realities of L2 reading and teaching, which are intersecting with “a massive social turn” (Gee, 2001), embodied in such concepts as “agency,” “community of practice,” and the like. I therefore call for more reading research to explore L2 reading via the lens of the socially-informed frameworks to give more insights into reading in the real life.
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