IULC Indiana University Linguistics Club

Teaching Ukrainian as a ridna mova ‘mother tongue’: (Re)Imagined communities in and out of the classroom

Time: 04:00pm - 05:30pm 

Place: President’s Room (Faculty Club, Indiana Memorial Union)

Debra Friedman

A growing trend in applied linguistic research has been to investigate learners’ real or desired membership in imagined communities, defined as “groups of people, not immediately tangible and accessible, with whom we connect through the power of the imagination” (Kanno & Norton, 2003, p. 241) as a factor in their investment in language learning, their learning trajectories, and learning outcomes (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2009; Norton & McKinney, 2010; Pavlenko & Norton, 2007). In this paper I draw upon data collected in two fifth grade Ukrainian classrooms and interviews with the children conducted four years later to explore the language classroom as a site for socializing learners into an imagined community. I will further outline how insights gained through this study will inform my future research into the relationships between language teaching, learner identity, and learner investment in ESL and foreign language learning contexts.

In category: Second language acquisition