Includes bibliographical references (p. [155]-165) and index.

General Editor's Preface

1. Fact and fiction in language learning
Saliha and the SLA canon -- Identity and language learning -- Power and identity -- Motivation and investment -- Ethnicity, gender and class -- Rethinking language and communicative competence -- Structure of book

2. Researching identity and language learning
Methodological framework -- Central questions -- The researcher and the researched -- The project -- Data organization -- Comment

3. The world of adult immigrant language learners The international contexte -- The Canadian world of immigrant women -- Biography, identity and language learning -- Comment

4. Eva and Mai: Old heads on young shoulders Eva -- Mai -- Comment

5. Mothers, migration and language learning Katarina -- Martina -- Felicia -- Comment

6. Second language acquisition theory revisited Natural language learning -- Alberto and the acculturation model of SLA -- The affective filter -- Reconceptualizing identity -- Language learning as a social practice -- Comment

7. Claiming the right to speak in classrooms and communities Formal language learning and adult immigrants -- Beyond communicative language teaching -- Rethinking multiculturalism -- The diary study as a pedagogy of possibility -- Transforming Monday morning -- Concluding comment

References

Index

"Drawing on a longitudinal case study of immigrant women in Canada, Bonny Norton suggests that second language acquisition theory has not adequately formulated a conception of identity that integrates the language learner and the language learning context. Such theory, in particular, has not given sufficient attention to relations of power between language learners and target language speakers. She suggests that a post-structuralist conception of identity as multiple, a site of struggle, and subject to change is an important contribution to the field of language learning and teaching. Further, she argues for a conception of investment to capture the complex and sometimes ambivalent relationship of language learners to the target language." "Integrating research, theory and classroom practice, this book will be of interest to students, teachers and researchers in the fields of second language learning and teaching, TESOL, applied linguistics and language planning." (Book Cover)