ESL reading strategies: Differences in Arabic and Mandarin speaker test performance

This study was undertaken to test the hypothesis that reading comprehension items, which elicit specific bottom-up and top-down strategies, favor certain linguistic/cultural groups. Verbal report data were collected from Arabic- and Mandarin-speaking English as a second language (ESL) learners to identify the reading strategies involved in carrying out 32 reading questions. Then a confirmatory approach to differential item functioning was used to determine whether bottom-up and top-down items functioned differentially for equal-ability Arabic and Mandarin ESL learners. Results revealed systematic group performance differences in four bottom-up and three top-down strategy categories. Items involving breaking a word into smaller parts, scanning, paraphrasing, and matching were found to favor Mandarin speakers, whereas items involving skimming, connecting, and inferring were found to favor Arabic speakers.