L2 Literacy and the Design of the Self: A Case Study of a Teenager Writing on the Internet

Abstract

This article presents a case study that uses ethnographic and discourse analytic methods to examine how electronic textual experiences in ESL figure in the identity formation and literacy development of the learner. First, the article reviews some recent work in literacy studies, L2 learning, and computer‐mediated communication to provide a conceptual basis for studying discursive practices and identity formation in L2 learning. The results of a case study of a Chinese immigrant teenager's written correspondence with a transnational group of peers on the Internet then show how this correspondence relates to his developing identity in the use of English. This study develops the notion of textual identity for understanding how texts are composed and used to represent and reposition identity in the networked computer media. It also raises critical questions on literacy and cultural belonging in the present age of globalization and transborder relations.

Teachers' attitudes towards Computer-Assisted Language Learning in Australia and Spain

“…Some studies carried out in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Barrutia (1964and 1970), or Gilman (1969, already showed a tendency to study the effectiveness of a certain CALL application in language teaching. This was also one of the main foci in the 1990s and in more recent years, as we can see in Blake (2000), Cahill and Catanzaro (1997), Chun (1994), Chun and Plass (1996), Davis and Lyman-Hager (1997), Derwing, Munro, and Carbonaro (2000), clac 57/2014, 3-44 bilbatua and herrero de haro: attitudes 9 González-Edfelt (1990), González-Bueno (2000), Grace (2000Grace ( ), kasper (2000, Lam (2000), Nagata (1996Nagata ( , 1997Nagata ( , 1998Nagata ( , 1999, Osuna (2000), and Van Handle and Corl (1999), and more recently, in Aydin and Genç (2011), in Heift and Schulze (2012: 28), and Wang and Vásquez (2012).…”

“…Lam (2000), also comments on this, saying that "teachers' lack of knowledge about using computers and lack of training for integrating computer technology into the classroom were related to their reluctance to use computer technology in the classroom".…”

Identity, language learning, and social change

“…The way that technology provides language learners with the means to construct imagined lives has been investigated by Lam (2000Lam ( , 2006, for example, who examined the computermediated transnational identities that immigrant youth in the USA were fashioning for themselves as multilingual, multicompetent actors. She found that these identities afforded them possibilities to provide language learning opportunities for themselves that were broader than those available to them in school, where they were stigmatized as immigrants and incompetent language users.…”

Language, Culture, and Identity in Online Fanfiction

“…Save for a few studies (Lam, 2000(Lam, , 2004Yi, 2005), there has been little inquiry into the roles of popular and fan culture in the online literacy and social practices of English language learning youth. Moreover, with the fast-paced propagation of new media and technologies, novel fan practices and 'virtual' communities based around popular culture seem to spring up on a daily basis.…”