How is developing English proficiency related to self, agency, and identity in a context where English is not used in daily life? – A narrative inquiry on seven Taiwanese graduate students’
language learning history
Abstract
Learner agency, provisionally defined as “the socioculturally mediated capacity to act” (Ahearn, 2001:112), adds a distinctive sociocultural dimension to the relatively individualistic yet well
established notion of learner autonomy (Benson, 2000; Little, 1999, 2004). Having been increasingly explored in the field of critical applied linguistics (Thorne, 2005; van Lier,
2004, 2008; Hunter and Cooke, 2007; Lantolf and Pavlenko, 2001; Lantolf and Thorne, 2006), agency adopts an ecological perspective of language learning by providing a means by which a language learner actively procures affordances, or action potentials, from his or her immediate environment (van Lier, 1996, 2004). Nevertheless, there has been little concrete conception of how agency, as a relational construct (Lantolf and Pavlenko, 2001), is influenced or limited in a context where the language is not used in daily life. This study aims to contribute to our
understanding of the phenomena by revealing how agency is enhanced, constrained, and ultimately transformed in an EFL environment such as Taiwan’s.
In Fall 2009, seven TESOL graduate students found themselves sitting in a course to study Prof.
Leo van Lier’s perspectives of self, agency, and identity in a Taiwanese university classroom.
Questions that immediately came to mind included: As language learners, what have taken them to this point of time? How do the concepts of self, agency, and identity apply to them as language learners? They developed narratives on each of their language learning history in both English and Chinese and interviewed one another in class and in groups for nuances of what they had experienced and how they felt. In Spring 2010, with a new class member from the Philippines came serving as a coresearcher, the eight of them plus their professor worked on analyzing the data. They were informed by Clandinin and Connelly (2000) and inspired by Karlsson (2008) as they worked in three groups to analyze the same narrative data set focusing on three different types of crucial affordances that emerged from the data, in a way similar to turning the kaleidoscope.
The three turns of the kaleidoscope and the preliminary findings from the analyses can be described (in simple terms) as:
(1) Landscape or places: Every turn of place created a new set of rules to be followed and new goals to be achieved, which then moved the individual to becoming a different self.
(2) People and relationships: Although it is clear that the self mostly made the choice, there are also cases when one chose to make others decide for them (i.e., being passive learners).
(3) Temporality or identity shifts caused by incidents, people, contexts in different time frames:
Most people developed totally different concepts of language learning during college/university.
College seems to be a critical moment for English learning for these narrators, which may have a lot to do with the nature of Taiwanese educational institution, systems, and examinations.
The analyses as in three turns of the kaleidoscope clearly reveal the dynamic and contingent complexity in the interaction of these EFL learners’ lives, the target language, and their contexts.
The study also highlights the significant role that English and English learning could play in the learner’s life, even though EFL environments are often considered more deprived than ESL environments. As conclusion, these TESOL graduate students will share with the audience their pedagogical insights derived from this study and experience.
CC’s Note
It was an amazingly exciting day for the students yesterday. I was with them the whole afternoon helping them get ready for the presentation for Leo. There seemed to be too much to do with so little time left. Students were very nervous. In the room which we usually had class in, groups gathered around computers talking, working, and getting ready. I helped one of the groups with their language, having them clarify what they tried to say, and I downloaded some pictures for them to use in the ppt. At 4pm I went off to meet Leo at the train station, so I myself had not seen the whole presentation before Leo saw it.
We actually did not start the seminar until a bit later than 6:10, because Leo and I had to be back from the station and then we spent some time waiting for Joe, one of the class presenters, to come back from his teaching. Once when the presentation started, the seven PhD and MA students took terms providing details to their parts of the work. I was really, really surprised by the high quality of performance that these students were able to pull off. In fact, all of them were able to articulate their thoughts clearly and provide good support for their arguments. You could clearly see the in-depth analysis that they went through to arrive at their interesting findings. They were really successful in impressing Leo -- So much so Leo thought it would make more sense to dedicate the rest of the seminar to this project! A lot of possible developments and some possible
theoretical frames were then discussed. Leo repeated several times that the work is really, really good.
I honestly had not expected them to be so good, and I am certainly very proud of them because they did it mostly on their own! One student said, "I can't believe that he actually likes our presentation!!" Their eyes were sparkling and excitement were lingering among all of us as we called it a day!
Tomorrow each of the students is going to put their narratives onto a big poster, in art form or in text and talk about it as an exercise to distill. We are not going to do the readings as Leo had previously planned now, and I could see that everybody in the class liked this idea very much. I am sure it is going to be more exciting as the seminar moving on to the next day!
Seminar Day 4: June 1, 2010