Abstract
The objective of this article is to discuss an exploratory study about the identity construction of eight student-teachers of English as learners of English as an additional language in the region of Vale do Acu, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil using some of the concepts developed by Bonny Norton, that is, investigating the types of investments made and the imagined communities aspired to by those student-teachers. For the exploratory study, a narrative perspective was adopted as identities are socio-cultural narratives constructed in time. The analyses showed that construction of the identities of the student-teachers investigated revolves around two types of investment: those which lead to learn and use the language, and those which lead to learn the English language to teach it. The results have shown that in the analyzed group of studentteachers, the learner-as-user and learner-as-teacher identities seem to confl ate and, in most cases, the learner-as-teacher identity seems to override the learner-as-user identity. Also, since many of the studies carried out on learner identity using Bonny Norton’s theoretical approach had immigrants in contexts where English is used by the community they are living in, this work is expected to contribute to Norton’s approach as the participants of this study are learning English as an additional language in contexts where the community members do not use English and English is mainly learnt in formal environments. Keywords: learners of English, identity, investments, imagined communities.
Highlights
The objective of this work is to investigate the identity construction of a group of student-teachers1 of English graduated by the Universidade do Estado de Rio Grande do Norte (UERN)
This study, aims at understanding the identity construction narratives of a group of studentteachers mainly as learners of English and not as learners of teaching, as many of the aforementioned studies have done, for some reasons that we will explain later, the learner-as-user and learner-as-teacher identities seem to conflate in many cases
In the field of Applied Linguistics in Brazil, and in the area of teacher education, the identity of the teacher of English as an additional language has been the main focus of several studies
Summary
The objective of this work is to investigate the identity construction of a group of student-teachers of English graduated by the Universidade do Estado de Rio Grande do Norte (UERN). The researcher and the participants had some talks about their learning processes inside and outside the classroom In this way, getting to know the social context of the participants became essential to understand the second language identity construction of the immigrant women investigated. According to Norton, Martina’s social identity can be defined as a site of struggle: struggle to learn a language as immigrant, as a learner in a classroom, as a worker in the restaurant, and the researcher in a narrative way knits Martina’s process of investment, desire and resistance, and presents different discursive instances/evidences of how she was able to construct a counter-discourse in her workplace. Some power relations spread through their learning narratives due to the fact that being immigrants they were placed or they placed themselves in situations of linguistic disadvantage
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