TITLE:
First-Year English Majors’ Identity Trans-formations and English Learning
AUTHORS:
Qiuming Lin
KEYWORDS:
Learner Identity, English Learning, Identity Dilemma, Investment, Imagined Community, Diary Study
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics,
Vol.4 No.2,
June
13,
2014
ABSTRACT: Learner identity has
been recognized as significant for second or foreign language learning in the
recent decades. By employing Bamberg
et al.’s (2011) framework of three identity dilemmas and
Norton’s identity theory of SLA (Norton,
2000, 2010) as the theoretical foundation, this study investigates
how learners’ identities transformed, and how they were related to learners’
English learning trajectories by tracing a group of first-year English majors
in a key university in China for one year. With the data elicited from one of
the participants’ diary and in-depth researcher-participants meetings, this paper
suggests that English learning is not just a process of acquiring a set of language
skills and knowledge, but a complicated social practice, in which learners’
identities are constantly constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed. This
finding has important implications for English teaching and learning in
China.