This article reports on a case study that investigates the learning preferences and strategies of Chinese students learning English as a second language (ESL) in Canadian school settings. It focuses on the interaction between second language (L2) learning methods that the students have adopted from their previous learning experience in China and ESL instruction they have encountered in the North American classroom. Twenty Grade 9-10 Chinese immigrant students in a Canadian urban public high school participated in the study. Data derived from questionnaires and interviews show that the students pragmatically searched for strategies to optimize their English learning by taking advantage of their first language skills and available scaffolding. In particular, they considered the explicit strategies they had experienced in first language (L1) and English as a foreign language (EFL) instruction before their arrival in North America to be valuable. This article proposes a resource-oriented functional approach to teaching and learning ESL. To that end, it argues that language-teaching strategies often used in North American ESL classrooms can integrate more explicit teaching and learning strategies to help students, particularly those with beginner levels of English proficiency, to acquire vocabulary more effectively. [An 8-page appendix follows this article.]