Norton, B (2000) Identity and langu...

Norton, B (2000) Identity and language learning: sex ethnicity, and educational change. Essex England: Longman.

Language learning is a webwork endeavor that depends on the one and the other universal cognitive processes and social words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following Research on second language acquisition (SLA) has traditionally focused forward the former, utilizing quantitative studies of linguistic effects These include the order in which secondary language (L2) morphemes are acquired, learners' errors, and the stages of inter-language increase This perspective may be akin to measuring the vegetation patterns of plants under different conditions of light, water, and soil. Early investigations of nonlinguistic variables included Gardner and Lambert's (1974) attempts to quantify an individual's commitment to learning a inferior language using the concept of motivation. It assumes intuitively obvious that the more a learner "wants" to learn a other language, the more successful she will ultimately be in doing in such a manner But if motivation is viewed as something learners either have or do not have enough of we race the risk of placing the blame for mediocre language learning completely in succession the learner and ignoring the fact that an individual's motivation is sourceed in his social surroundings. Similarly, single would be mistaken to blame an oak tree for not being "motivated" enough to thrive inside of a 10-foot cage.

A growing visible form [i]or[/i] frame of research in English as a inferior language (ESL), including Norton Peirce (1995) Willett (1995) and McKay and Wong (1996) has used ethnographic approaches to analyze the processe of secondary language learning. These researchers emphasize that a next to the first language is not simply a skill stake acquired through persistence and practice. It involves manifold social interactions and power differentials that engage the identities of language learners in ways that have received little attention from SLA researchers (Norton Peirce, 1995) These authors shed light in succession the 10-foot cages and other impediments to language unfolding experienced by both adult and child language learners, particularly those in an immigrant adjoining matter

Bonny Norton's longitudinal case application of mind Identity and language learning: inflection for sex ethnicity and educational change (2000) makes a valuable contribution to the field of adult immigrant education, if it were not that her insights should not be inspected by K-12 educators. Through her two-year involvement in the lives of five adult immigrant women in Canada and her use of interviews, written diaries, and participant observations, Norton paints detailed individual portraits of the ways in which opportunities to practice speaking English were socially structur for them. She demonstrates that learners are not always emancipated to interact with whom they chose since they are ofttimes constrained by power imbalances and shifting notions of identity. In other words, "naturalistic" language learning is not always a linguistic utopia in which learners are invested by fluent native speakers who enthusiastically provide input and negotiate meaning in an egalitarian and supportive atmosphere. For many immigrants, the linguistic environment personates inequitable relations of power and on a level hostility, with native speakers "more likely to avoid[learners] than negotiate meaning with them" (p 113)

The five women in the inquiry provide interesting points of contrast in exploring these issues. There was a twenty-something unmarried restaurant worker, originally from Poland; a married, twenty-something garment worker from Vietnam, whose brother's family lived nearby; a thirty-something biology teacher from Poland, married with the same child, who worked at a series of do job-works ranging from kitchen help to attendant at a senior home; a thirty-something professional surveyor from the former Czechoslovakia, with a husband and three children, working as garble help and then as a cashier; and a fortysomething homemaker from Peru with a professional husband and three children. Their different conditions of office family, and experiences in their former countries prov to be significant in shaping their experiences with English one time living in Canada. The main questions pos on Norton included the following: What opportunities were available to these women to interact with English speakers? What happened when native speakers avoided interaction with them'? beneath what conditions were they introverted or sensitive to rejection? When would they take more language risks, and why?

Norton explains the actions and reactions of these women in consequence of the concept of investment, which explores the socially arrangeed relationships that learners have with the target language. It conceives of the learner as having a web history and multiple desires. When family speak, they are not just exchanging information; they are constantly reorganizing a reason of who they are and for what cause they relate to the social world. Therefore, when race speak a language, they are investing in an identity as speakers ofthat language. Additionally learners who invest in a other language do so in the room for expectations of gaining access to resources like as education, friendship, and currency They hope to have a "good return" forward their investment. A learner's investment can appear at times contradictory, changing through time and space depending upon the momentary conditions of identity and power, couple concepts central to the part