Includes Index

Preface :
Introduction
Revisiting Identity and Language Learning
Relevance of Identity Research to Language Learning
Post structuralist Theories of Identity
Identity and Investment
Imagined Communities and Imagined Identities
Identity Categories and Language Learning
Methods and Analysis of Research
Identity and Language Teaching
Emerging Themes and Future Directions
Structure of the Book
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
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 Context
The Canadian World of Immigrant Women
Biography, Identity and Language Learning
Comment
4: Eva and Mai: Old Heads on Young Shoulders
Eva
Mai
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
Conclusion 199
References 202
Index

Identity and Language Learning draws on a longitudinal case study of immigrant women in Canada to develop new ideas about identity, investment, and imagined communities in the field of language learning and teaching. Bonny Norton demonstrates that a post structuralist conception of identity as multiple, a site of struggle, and subject to change across time and place is highly productive for understanding language learning. Her sociological construct of investment is an important complement to psychological theories of motivation. The implications for language teaching and teacher education are profound. Now including a new, comprehensive Introduction as well as an Afterword by Claire Kramsch, this second edition addresses the following central questions:

- Under what conditions do language learners speak, listen, read and write?

- How are relations of power implicated in the negotiation of identity?

- How can teachers address the investments and imagined identities of learners?

The book integrates research, theory, and classroom practice, and is essential reading for students, teachers and researchers in the fields of language learning and teaching, TESOL, applied linguistics and literacy.