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	I’ve already mentioned that research on cultural learning styles is contradictory, and tends to offer conflicting results. I would like to illustrate this with a situation which has been the subject of a lot of debate and research, and which has been called “the paradox of the Asian learner”. Especially in secondary and university education in Western institutions, Chinese learners are often reported to be more passive, less interactive and dependent upon the teacher than most students. They are reported to use rote memorisation, apparently without much personal understanding of what is committed to memory; in other words, they seem to adopt what has been called a “surface” rather than a “deep” approach to study. And yet … and yet, their level of achievement in exams is relatively high; also, in spite of their tendency to learn by rote, they also show higher scores in the use of study strategies than Western students. How is this possible? What’s wrong in our interpretation of the Chinese learning style?
	Before we try to figure out an explanation of this paradox, let’s mention some concrete facts first. As Graziella Favaro reports in one of her books (2002), at the end of the very first school semester, Chinese children have learned 160 different written characters, the Latin alphabet, the relevant pronunciation in the Chinese national language, and the meaning of every word. In the second semester, Chinese children memorise new words through short stories and short poems, which they repeat, copy in writing and read aloud collectively. In this way, in the second semester of the first year at primary school, they learn another 220 characters, and then, through the years, they learn an average of one or two new characters every day, so that, by the end of the sixth year of primary school, they master about 2500 characters. If you think that you must memorize 9000 characters in order to be able to read what is normally published, you can appreciate the enormous amount of effort which learners must spend.
	However, this is just the surface of the iceberg, or, if you like, the most external layer of the onion. Chinese learners belong to what have been called “Confucian heritage cultures”, together with such different countries as Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Confucianism stresses the benefits of fixed hierarchical relationships which show respect for age, seniority, rank and family background. Consequently, the teacher is often seen as an authority figure, the one who must know all, but also as an adult who, like parents, helps students develop as complete human beings – as an ancient Chinese saying goes: “If a teacher for a day, a father for life”. However, the responsibility for learning is placed on students. Students are encouraged to do their best. Intellectual ability is valued but is not enough – what is also required and expected is diligence, effort and endurance to achieve academic success.
	Within this tradition, students learn through cooperation, but watch out there - not as a way to promote the individual – rather the opposite, as a way to promote the common good, by supporting each other. In the learning situation, therefore, students are sensitive to the other students in the class and are concerned for the group as a whole. Standing out as a single individual is out of the question – as another proverb, this one from Japan, goes: “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down”.
	Despite all this, as I mentioned, Asian learners are often good achievers, and a lot of research has tried to explain this “paradox of the Asian learner”. Research has found out, for example, that Chinese learners seem to see the combination of memorisation with understanding as normal because they believe that “if they really understand the material, they will have a very strong impression that will help them to memorise without much effort” (Marton, Delll’Alba & Tse 1996). However, they also see “memorisation with understanding” as essential when they have to prepare for examinations; in other words, if students perceive that assessment requires only, or mainly, the reproduction of knowledge, they will tend to use some form of memorisation (Au e Entwistle 1999) – and this, of course, is common to many students around the world.