language instructors are often frustrated by the fact that students do not automatically transfer the strategies they use when reading in their native language to reading in a language they are learning. instead, the seem to think reading means starting at the beginning and going word by word stopping to look up every unknown vocabulary item until they reach the end when they do this students are relying exclusively on their linguistic knowledge, a bottom-up strategy. one of the most important function of the language instructor, then, is to help students move part this idea and use top-down strategies as they do in their native language