From a Struggling Reader to an Engaged Reader: A Self Case Study of L2 Reading Strategies of an International Doctoral Student in the U.S.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to identify the L2 reading strategies of an international doctoral student from both emic and etic perspectives. The research questions are: (1) Does the reader apply different strategies for different purposes? (2) Does the reader’s control over language short circuit when he encounters difficult readings? (3) What good enough reading decisions do the reader make when he reads as a doctoral student? (4) Does the reader tend to use global strategies more than local strategies as previous research showed? Methods of this case study include narrative analysis, structured recall protocol, document analysis, and stimulated recall. Analyses from the data indicate that (1) The researcher used multiple strategies for different purposes. (2) The researcher short circuited on many occasions and the importance of background knowledge. (3) The researcher had to make good enough reading decisions in order to get the momentum to finish the readings. (4) The researcher used mostly global strategies rather than local ones, which corroborated findings in the literature. Future research directions and pedagogical implications were also suggested in the end.