Jia YU

1. A qualitative study on learner identity of American Chinese learners and foreign language learning Jia YU

2. INTRODUCTION: RESEARCH AREA • A "socially and contextually" (Larsen-Freeman 2007, pp. 773) overview of second language acquisition (SLA) - post Firth and Wagner (1997) • A poststructuralist view on identity • Autobiographical narratives in research on L2 learners' identity

3. AIM/JUSTIFICATION • Few research on Chinese learners' identity (I only find one article and it is very negative to Chinese teachers in the U.S.) • Previous research on negotiation of identity focused primarily on spoken data, and most narrative-based studies recently on identity focused on bilingual autobiographical writers, who have a high competency in the target language, and are only representative of middle and upper-middle class learners (Pavlenko 2001a).

4. REFERENCES Block, D. (2007). The rise of identity in SLA research: Post Firth and Wagner(1997). Modern Language Journal, 91, 863-876. Coffey, S. & Street, B. (2008). Narrative and identity in the "language learning project". Modern Language Journal, 92(3), 452-464. Firth, A. & Wagner, J. (1997). On discourse, communication, and (some) fundamental concepts in SLA research. Modern Language Journal, 81, 286-300. Pavlenko, A. (2001a). "In the world of the tradition, I was unimagined": Negotiation of identities in cross-cultural autobiographies. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 5(3), 317-344. Pavlenko, A. (2001b). Language learning memoirs as a gendered genre. Applied Linguistics, 22(2), 213-240. Peirce, B. N. (1995). Social identity, investment and language Learning. TESOL Quarterly, 29(1), 9-31.

5. RESEARCH QUESTIONS • How do individual learners construct their subjectivity(childhood, family, school...) over time in narratives? From their personal stories with specific reference to people, time and event, questions include: • How do individual learners legitimize their use of Chinese? • How do individual learners construct particularly sites of professional and personal identities that structure agency? • How do individual learners make both symbolic and material investment on learning Chinese , as regard to the rising power of China? • How do they choose to align with or not align with the native Chinese group?

6. METHODOLOGY SUBJECTS/SOURCES Two successful Chinese learners, who either "had studied languages to a degree level or who had gained proficiency by living in the target language country and/or using foreign language(s) in their professional life" (Coffey and Street 2008, pp.453)

7. MATERIALS/INSTRUMENTS • Elicited narratives on language learning • Individual semi-structured interviews

8. PROCEDURE • First, for the written account, participants are asked to write a language learning autobiography with prompts. • Second, participants are contacted to set up a semi-structured interview for about an hour, after the written accounts are collected and briefly examined. Interviews will be recorded and transcrbed.

9. TYPE OF DATA AND ANALYSIS • First, identity the figured world of language learners - people, places, and events • Second, describe the important narrative character that shapes the telling of the narrative. It allows us to understand how learners position themselves with reference to the narratives.

10. ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS/LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY • Not enough data is collected.

11. EXPECTED FINDINGS • The learners are social actors, who derives and act upon different positions that are institutionally and culturally situated, and that are also dynamic and individually situated. • I am able to identify a number of discursive worlds, both material and symbolic, that are figured in the autobiographical accounts.