Abstract: Probe-recognition task is adopted to explore how Chinese English learners represent flashback information in Chinese and English text reading. The results show that: 1)when Chinese English learners read Chinese narrative, the reading time of probe words is influenced by the events duration which supports the chronological hypothesis; 2)when English learners read English narrative, the reading time of probe words is not influenced by the duration of events. It is shown that readers interpret a flashback as providing background information for the situation described before, which supports the background hypothesis. The whole research indicates that language proficiency is an important factor to determine readers’ time representation of flashback events.

Key words: English learners, flashback, time representation, the chronological hypothesis, the background hypothesis