This study examined the ways in which Taiwanese adolescent readers approached texts written in two varieties of their first language i.e., classical and contemporary literary styles of Chinese, along with a foreign language i.e., English. The construction-integration model of text comprehension (Kintsch, 1998, 2004) and reader response theory (Beach, 1993; Galda & Beach, 2001) served as the theoretical frameworks for this study. Data included semi-structured interviews and think-aloud protocols. The constant comparative method proposed by Glaser and Strauss (1967) was employed for data analyses. Overall, the data show that the text processing mechanism utilized by the bilingual readers of Chinese and English appeared to follow the procedure of the construction-integration model of reading. Lower-level processes became substantially salient as students read the texts written in classical literary styles of Chinese and contemporary English, respectively. In contrast, relatively higher-level comprehension processes were evident in students’ reading of texts written in contemporary Chinese. The degree of language transfer, particularly in the employment of mental translation, indicates a ‘linguistic interdependent relationship’ between one’s two languages, as posited by Cummins (1979).
