Content area
Full Text
Introduction
The population of English as a Second Language (ESL) learners has increased significantly in higher education settings in the United States today. There were approximately 583,000 foreign students enrolled in American colleges and universities in the 2006-2007 academic year, more than half of whom were from Asia-students from India, China, South Korea, and Japan represent the first to the fourth rankings respectively (Institute of International Education, 2007). In the 2006-2007 academic year, there were about 35,300 Japanese students enrolled in higher education in the United States (Institute of International Education, 2007).
It has been reported that Japanese ESL students are generally unsuccessful when studying in English speaking countries (Hayes, 1979; Matsumoto, 1994; Miller, 1982; Ota, 1994). Most Japanese students study English in Japan only in order to pass the university entrance examinations that mainly consist of analytical and grammatical skills of reading rather than oral and communicative skills (Butler & Iino, 2005).
In addition, the typical way of reading in English for Japanese students is the grammar-translation method (Mantero & Iwai, 2005). Using this approach, the students depend on English-Japanese dictionaries and translate from English to Japanese word by word. They stop at the point where they encounter an unknown word, and they clarify its meaning completely. Otherwise, they believe that they do not understand a text or piece of information well. It is difficult for them to understand a whole message or the intentions of authors because they do not really think about the meaning in context, but rather they focus on each word and each sentence so that they know what the Japanese translation is (Kitao & Kitao, 1995).
Having this learning background, many Japanese ESL college students have reading difficulties when they enter the United States. They try to find some strategies that work for academic reading in ESL settings as college students. The primary issues are, how do they figure out more effective reading strategies, why do they think the reading strategies they used in Japan are not appropriate, and in which situations do they have reading problems?
Second Language Acquisition
Previous research suggests that Second Language Acquisition (SLA) refers to "the subconscious or conscious process by which a language, other than the mother tongue, is learned in a natural...