Discussion

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Chapter 5 Discussion

The previous chapter has already addressed Research Questions 1 and 2, detailing Erin’s experiences before, during, and after her graduate study in the U.K.

This chapter mainly addresses Research Question 3, “What is the role that agency plays in Erin’s learning process, and how does she exercise learner agency to cope with the challenges and various scenarios in the different learning contexts:

Taiwan and the U.K.?” The core features of learner agency proposed by van Lier was adopted as the analytic framework.

As reviewed earlier, van Lier (2008) proposed three features of learner agency:

“(1) Agency involves initiative or self-regulation by the learner; (2) Agency is interdependent, that is, it mediates and is mediated by the sociocultural context; (3) Agency includes an awareness of the responsibility for one’s own actions vis-à-vis the environment, including affected others” (p.172). van Lier’s theoretical proposal of learner agency was in many aspects consistent with my observation of Erin’s story.

First, her initiative and self-regulation are clear in the story. Despite having many challenges to deal with, in Erin’s learning experiences, it is noted that she always takes initiatives and exercise her agency, whether performing or rejecting the action that she was expected to take. van Lier (2010) specifically pinpointed that agency is

“movement, a change of state or direction, or even a lack of movement where movement is expected” (p. 4). This changing movement is observed, first of all, in Erin’s negative attitude toward Taiwanese English educational system embodied by real action such as deliberately skipping classes. Then, during the time preparing the college entrance exam, Erin again decided to stop making any investment on English

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and turned to make more efforts on her other interest, that is History, and she indeed became a History major in college. This shows that Erin is indeed an agentive learner who is goal-oriented and willing to take initiative as she is well aware of how to spend her time in her best interest even though she did not seem to have the

movement expected by her teachers or parents. This finding corresponds to Chang’s (2011) case study on two nonnative English-speaking (NNES) doctoral students.

Chang’s (2011) participants’ investment in language learning was driven by several practical considerations, including strengthening different kinds of disciplinary competence. The author concluded that regardless of various challenges the NNES needed to face, the learner was able to exercise their agency to choose where and how they made investments. This statement is also true with Erin’s case.

Erin’s story and the first feature of van Lier’s perception of learner agency remind TESOL practitioners that “a lack of motivation” or “a lack of movement”

needs to be taken as a revelation of learner agency. TESOL practitioners generally have the mindset that learners’ willingness to learn or their motivation is a binary system; that is, the learner either has or do not have the motivation to learn. However, with van Lier’s frame of learner agency, learners’ willingness to learn has to be taken as a continuum, and learners’ performance is the product of their exercise of agency, whether or not they decide to learn.

van Lier’s second feature of learner agency is that agency is “interdependent”:

the learner’s exert of agency is profoundly associated with the ideology and the rooted culture of the wider sociocultural context. This is also obvious in Erin’s experiences.

For example, in Erin’s story, it has been noted that her teachers as representative of

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the sociocultural context that Erin engaged in played critical roles all along, and her perceptions of the teachers were the key to the success of some school subjects, such as History and Geography. Indeed, in Taiwan, with the tradition of Confucianism, teachers are fairly important in the learning process. Many learners believe that

“teachers can never be wrong” and are taught to fully respect teachers. Under such circumstances, teachers can be ‘idols’ to some learners, as those in the popular culture, and the learner would try their best to seek teachers’ approval. Erin is no exception. In fact, her desire to get approval from her teachers appears to be especially strong. Thus, once when Erin perceived that she was not favored by her English teacher, her level of willingness to learn lowered, whether or not the teacher actually showed negative attitude toward Erin’s performance. Deep in her heart she thought being a

low-achiever deserved more attention from the teacher, but in reality, she could only feel contempt.

The concept of learner agency and context interdependence shifted as Erin moved to the informal learning and work context. Ever since Erin graduated from high school, she no longer considered English as a subject to study but a tool to explore different worlds. She started to immerse herself in multiple foreign language environments, including indulging herself in American/British TV series, working as a teaching assistant (TA) in an English-only language institute, and finally studying abroad. Not only did Erin change her perceptions of English but she viewed her identity differently: She did not regard herself as an English learner but an English user.

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Working in the English-only language institute is another instance of learner agency and context interdependence that Erin’s story demonstrated. Erin often needed to negotiate with many international teachers in her work. She also hung out with international teachers and became friends with them. These experiences offered Erin opportunities to speak and to listen, transferring what she acquired from TV series, an imagined community, to real life. Fully engaged in a foreign language environment, Erin finally was able to break away from the limitations of the formal institutionalized English learning system and gradually reconnected her relationship with English.

The third feature of van Lier’s learner agency led this researcher to focus on Erin’s awareness of responsibility. While studying abroad, Erin had difficulty adapting to the learning environment in the first place. She skipped classes to avoid embarrassment first, but she was aware of her responsibility for her action and put herself together quickly, as she stated in interviews that she did not go abroad “for fun”

but to study. She knew she needed to finish the reading materials however hard they were and to be brave about speaking up in class despite feeling anxious. These

experiences indicate that she was aware, and the third feature of van Lier’s theoretical proposal of learner agency applies.

All in all, Erin’s story makes van Lier’s features of learner agency concrete in the Taiwanese context. From these concrete instances, two assertions can be derived:

(1) Being an EFL learner in the formal educational context may encounter many challenges but the learner still has room to exercise his or her agency—even if this could mean avoiding or rejecting learning the language, and (2) Fully engaged in a foreign language environment, the learner is likely to break away from the limitations

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of formal English learning system, and (3) become aware of their responsibility.

Assertion 1 provides a solid support to van Lier’s claim that the leaner is still

exercising their agency even when they refuse to perform the action they are expected to take. Also, learners will take initiative to decide where to invest their time and efforts on. Assertion 2 can be considered corresponding to van Lier’s features 2. That is, the concepts of interdependence between the learner and context can be clearly illustrated by Erin’s indulging in formal and informal language acquisition

environments. Assertion 3 is consistent with van Lier’s features 3 that Erin was fully aware of her own responsibility for her own learning as she tried out various learning strategies in different contexts.

To conclude, this chapter provides an in-depth discussion on the implication of Erin’s story using van Lier’s features of language learner agency as the framework.

Taiwan is a limited context for EFL learners, but learners in Taiwan do have access to many learning resources. Erin’s language learning story prompts us to think what the language means to Taiwanese EFL learners as to her ways of exerting her agency was documented and analyzed in this study. As mentioned earlier, most Taiwanese

learners are exposed to English learning at a young age, Erin herself included.

Nevertheless, in the interviews, Erin clearly stated that in Taiwan her willingness to speak English was low, especially in the English class at school. Studying in the middle school, Erin barely wanted to speak English, while in the U.K., she actually enjoyed speaking English to people she did not even know. Such a contrast requires teachers and researchers to a consider the core differences between the two contexts, especially in terms of the role English the language plays for Taiwanese learners. It is

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the researchers’ hope that this study has provided a possible way to engage in such a consideration.

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Chapter 6 Conclusion