Fact and fiction in language learning researching identity and language learning the world of adult immigrant language learners Eva and Mai - old heads on young shoulders mothers, migration, and language learning second language acquisition theory revisited claiming the right to speak in classrooms & communities.

Identity and language learning : gender, ethnicity and educational change

This article explores the complex interrelationships between language and culture, between teachers' sociocultural identities and teaching practices, and between their explicit discussions of culture and implicit modes of cultural transmission in their classes. A 6-month ethnographic study examined how teachers deal with institutional and curricular expectations regarding their teaching of (North American) culture in their EFL classrooms in a postsecondary institution in Japan. The study also explored the teachers' changing understandings of what constitutes culture and of how they viewed themselves in terms of their various social and cultural roles. Common themes included (a) the complexities and paradoxes associated with teachers' professional, social, political, and cultural identities and their (re)presentation of these in class; (b) their quest for interpersonal and intercultural connection in that EFL context; (c) their desire for educational (and personal) control in the face of contested cultural practices; and (d) disjunctures between teachers' implicit and explicit messages in relation to their cultural understandings and practices. We discuss these themes and make recommendations for teacher education purposes. We argue that the cultural underpinnings of language curricula and teaching must be examined further, particularly so in intercultural situations in which participants are negotiating their sociocultural identities as well as the curriculum.

The Negotiation of Teachers' Sociocultural Identities and Practices in Postsecondary EFL Classrooms.

One source of information that should inform decisions about English for academic purposes (EAP) writing courses is students' experiences in those courses and beyond. A survey of ESL students in the U.S. (Leki & Carson, 1994) has indicated that they experience writing differently depending on the source of information drawn on in writing a text: general world knowledge or personal experience; a source text or texts used as a springboard for ideas; or a source text (or other external reality), the content of which the student must display knowledge. This article, based on interview data, reports on how ESL students experience writing under each of these conditions in their EAP writing classes and their academic content classes across the curriculum. The findings suggest that writing classes require students to demonstrate knowledge of a source text much less frequently than other academic courses do. We argue that EAP classes that limit students to writing without source texts or to writing without responsibility for the content of source texts miss the opportunity to engage L2 writing students in the kinds of interactions with text that promote linguistic and intellectual growth.

To explain and understand any human social behavior … we need to know the meaning attached to it by the participants themselves. (Nielsen, 1990)

"Completely Different Worlds": EAP and the Writing Experiences of ESL Students in University Courses

This article explores the discourse socialization of nonnative- and native-English-speaking graduate students through their engagement in one type of classroom speech event, oral academic presentations (OAPs). From a language socialization perspective, an 8-month ethnographic study investigated how students were expected to speak in two graduate courses in a TESL program and how they acquired the oral academic discourses required to perform successful OAPs. Data were collected mainly from classroom observations, video recordings of OAPs, interviews, and questionnaires. The OAP discourse was analyzed as embedded in the local culture of the graduate courses, being linked with ethnographically derived information. Findings suggest that both nonnative and native speakers gradually became apprenticed into oral academic discourses through ongoing negotiations with instructors and peers as they prepared for, observed, performed, and reviewed OAPs. OAPs, which are commonplace, seemingly straightforward activities, were also found to be complex cognitive and sociolinguistic phenomena. Based on these findings, this article argues that academic discourse socialization should be viewed as a potentially complex and conflictual process of negotiation rather than as a predictable, unidirectional process of enculturation. Implications for L2 pedagogy and future research are discussed.

Discourse Socialization Through Oral Classroom Activities in a TESL Graduate Program

Although historically much teaching of English has been done by nonnative-English-speaking teachers (NNESTs), research on their concerns as English educators has been neglected. This article takes as its central focus the narrative of NNESTs in the context of critical praxis. It discusses a graduate seminar offered for perhaps the first time in a TESOL program for NNESTs. The article presents the process of interrogating the nativeness paradigm among NNESTs themselves via their own experiences and self-representation. It discusses the validity of conceptual tools designed to overcome disempowering discourses that may exist in TESOL programs and centers on the construction of identity among NNESTs that neither prescribes a limited role for them in the profession nor specifies definite boundaries to their capacities therein. The study suggests that the process of empowerment of NNESTs is neither linear nor simple but can nevertheless be generated within and by teachers engaged in critical praxis. It also demonstrates that many of the participants found a new relationship with their contexts, analyzed the causes of their powerlessness, and generated a new sense of agency as teachers and scholars in the field.

Revisiting the Colonial in the Postcolonial: Critical Praxis for Nonnative-English-Speaking Teachers in a TESOL Program

Part 1 Contexts for L2 research: introduction to L2 research some developments in L2 research. Part 2 Approaches to research: correlation approaches case-study approaches survey research ethnographic research experimental research multisite, multimethod and large-scale research researchers, teachers and inquiry concluding remarks.

Donna M. Johnson

Papers

Approaches to Research in Second Language Learning