We are what we read: reading identity of university students of English language teaching

Abstract

Reading plays an important role in learning and is a source of educational, social and life experiences. How learners see themselves as readers can be viewed as reading identity, and reading identity is likely to affect the development of knowledge and skills at all levels of education, including university level. This paper looks at the reading identity of 45 students of English Language Teaching (ELT) at a university in Turkey expressed through written reports, learner diaries and interview data that were collected while they were taking a course in English literature. Analysis shows how the students presented themselves in terms of what they read, how well they read and how they positioned themselves in relation to other readers, to different texts and to their own feelings about reading in their first and second languages. Three types of reading identity were found in the data: manifest state identity, where reading is an important part of the student’s life, introjected state identity where reading is strongly associated with one aspect of the student’s life as a professional English teacher and neutral state identity where reading is limited to being a tool for communicating meaning in certain situations. Findings have implications for curriculum content and methodology and provide insights into the role of reading in the students’ educational lives.