Emerging Multiple Identities of Prep Students in Social Media Interaction

This session arose out of a desire to examine construction and co-construction of identities of language learners who are more than just a recipient of input in the complex process of foreign language learning at prep school.... [ view full abstract ]

This session arose out of a desire to examine construction and co-construction of identities of language learners who are more than just a recipient of input in the complex process of foreign language learning at prep school. The study was carried out with the participation of 35 prep students. A group page was created in social media to encourage students’ English language use outside school contexts in a technology enhanced environment. Data was collected from the students’ and instructor’s posts and comments for a period of four months. This study, in a qualitative and descriptive frame, draws upon narrative research, content analysis and discourse analysis. Particular discursive constructs are used as a frame to achieve a more comprehensive picture of how learner-learner and learner-teacher identities are negotiated in on-going discourse. However, this does not, on any account, come to mean a preference for the static view of identities, on the contrary the study adheres to emerging identities in the dynamism of interaction. It opened up new realms to perform identities not traditionally associated with those of “student” in instructed institutional contexts although they are not totally exempt from their student roles as it is still a class group page. The students moved in and out of language learner identity and showed resistance to this identity attributed to them, but their language learner identities always remained foregrounded. It is, therefore, important that instructors view learners as individuals with multiple and changing identities, not just as individuals with English language learning needs.

The aspiration is to provide a lens to prep students’ emerging multiple identities in a group page in social media. Adopting a series of qualitative methodological and theoretical pillars, it revealed multiple identities of... [ view full abstract ]

The aspiration is to provide a lens to prep students’ emerging multiple identities in a group page in social media. Adopting a series of qualitative methodological and theoretical pillars, it revealed multiple identities of students may become salient and were established through solidarity, friendship, jokes and multi-modalities in social media.