Linguistic identity changes and foreign language competence development: chinese students studying abroad in Germany
- This dissertation explores the linguistic identity changes of Chinese international students in Germany, and the relationship between their identity reconstruction and their multilingual competence. With the social turn (Block, 2003) of applied linguistics, research on study abroad has shown that student sojourners abroad encounter challenges not only to their language abilities, but also to their identities, which explains the vast individual differences in the measurable outcomes of student sojourns abroad. However, the realm of learners’ linguistic identity development in the English as a lingua franca (ELF) and multilingual contexts remains to be further explored, since most existing studies examined learners in the target language community. Guided by poststructuralist views and sociocultural theories, this study is designed with a view towards investigating the lived experience of Chinese international students at German universities. Employing a qualitative approach, my research tracked seventeen Chinese students’ experiences of language learning and use in both their social lives and academic settings over one year. The empirical work combined semi-structured, in-depth interviews and emails. Three rounds of one-to-one interviews were conducted every 6 months and each round focused on students’ respective past, present and future. The grounded theory approach (Corbin & Strauss, 2015) was used in this study to analyse the data, aiming at generating theoretical explanations for phenomena through constant comparison. The results of the category-based analysis offer a new lens on the intricate linguistic identity development of Chinese students in the study abroad context. The construction of their new identity facets is related to various contextual elements in experiences of their language learning and use. More importantly, learners’ identity changes related to the use of ELF is conceived as within a framework of multilingualism (Jenkins, 2015). In any given social interaction, learners’ linguistic identities are influenced by a combination of factors: perceived linguistic proficiency gap, power distribution,preferred communication styles, sensitivity to second/third language self-images and openness to new cultures. It is these factors, instead of the lingua franca context or target language context per se, that come into play in the reformation of learners’ linguistic identities. Learners’ linguistic identity changes, together with their priority setting in studying abroad, are in turn interconnected with their multilingual competence development. The findings of my study suggest theories for understanding learners’ linguistic identity development and the outcomes of their language learning in the study abroad context in the face of the complexity of individual experiences. My study also demonstrates the importance to foster learners’ “self-presentational competence” (Pellegrino Aveni, 2005: 145-146) so that they could successfully negotiate new subject positions when crossing the borders.
Author: | Jingyue Maeder-Qian |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-450922 |
Referee: | Daniela ElsnerORCiDGND, Britta Viebrock |
Advisor: | Daniela Elsner |
Document Type: | Doctoral Thesis |
Language: | English |
Date of Publication (online): | 2017/11/21 |
Year of first Publication: | 2017 |
Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
Granting Institution: | Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität |
Date of final exam: | 2017/05/30 |
Release Date: | 2017/11/21 |
Page Number: | 300 |
Note: | Diese Dissertation steht außerhalb der Universitätsbibliothek leider (aus urheberrechtlichen Gründen) nicht im Volltext zur Verfügung, die CD-ROM kann (auch über Fernleihe) bei der UB Frankfurt am Main ausgeliehen werden. |
HeBIS-PPN: | 423730517 |
Institutes: | Neuere Philologien |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache |
Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
Linguistik | |
Licence (German): | ![]() |