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Multimodalities and Chinese Students’ L2 Practices

Positioning, Agency, and Community

Min Wang - Foreword by James Paul Gee

Multimodalities and Chinese Students’ L2 Practices: Identity, Community, and Literacy explores the complex relations and interactions among multimodality, positioning, and agency in increasingly digitized, multilingual, and multicultural contexts. Min Wang uses interview narratives, WeChat exchanges, and class observations and field notes of three Chinese international students’ lived experiences of English learning to show that these L2 learners recognized and appropriated multiple modes and digital tools for their L2 literacies practices. They used multimodalities to position themselves as L2 users who are confident, able, and competent, but sometimes also struggling and ambivalent. The practice of meaning-making, remaking, designing, and redesigning demonstrated their agency as L2 learners. Positioned as cultural and social beings, these L2 learners presented their self-understandings and self-representations through symbolic and material artifacts, interactions with local and non-local people, and engagement in WeChat discussions and ELI learning. They assumed rights, obligations, and expectations in order to become legitimate community members. In the process their agency was promoted, negotiated, or sometimes limited by micro-social structures and ongoing interactions.
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  • Author
  • TOC
  • TOC
  • Reviews
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Lexington Books
Pages: 178 • Trim: 6¼ x 9
978-1-4985-9456-1 • Hardback • March 2020 • $105.00 • (£81.00)
978-1-4985-9457-8 • eBook • March 2020 • $45.00 • (£35.00)
Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Sociolinguistics, Foreign Language Study / English as a Second Language, History / Asia / General, Education / Teaching Methods & Materials / Language Arts, Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Applied Linguistics
Min Wang is assistant professor of TESOL in the department of education specialties at St. John’s University.

Foreword

Introduction

Part 1 Theories and Methodology

Chapter 1 Theories, Setting, and Methods

Part 2 Narrating L2 Learners’ Cultural Experiences

Chapter 2 Stories of Chinese Names and Keepsakes

Part 3 Life in America

Chapter 3 Narratives of Embarrassing Experiences and Attempts for Opportunities

Chapter 4 Interactions in the WeChat Discussion Group

Chapter 5 Practicing L2 Literacies in the ELI

Part 4 Conclusion and Implications

Chapter 6 Concluding Remarks and Takeaways

Bibliography

About the Author

As a timely response to L2 learning in the globalized and digitalized world, the book offers fresh insights into empowering young adult L2 learners to exercise agency to gain membership in different communities of practices and provides educational researchers and practitioners with implications for promoting culturally relevant pedagogies in the ecology of L2 classrooms.


— Journal of Pragmatics


"Min Wang’s fine-grained case study of three Chinese learners of English in the USA provides much insight into the way international students navigate complex transnational identities. A timely and important contribution to our understanding of language learning in the digital age."
— Bonny Norton, University of British Columbia, Canada


"Min Wang has conducted a careful analysis of the positioning moves and agentive actions of three Chinese students learning English in a university-based language institute in the U.S. By examining multiple dimensions of these students’ positioning work across time, through varied modalities, and in different locations—both physical and virtual, Wang provides a powerful demonstration of how identity, agency and language learning are interdependent phenomena. Applied linguists and other scholars will welcome this important contribution to the growing body of research using holistic, ecological approaches when examining agency and language learning."
— Elizabeth Miller, University of North Carolina


"In this book, the reader will see how young adult L2 learners develop multimodal and multilingual literacies and navigate their positional identities as a capable community member in a social context. This is an excellent contribution to the second language field with important theoretical and practical insights."
— Bogum Yoon, State University of New York at Binghamton


Multimodalities and Chinese Students’ L2 Practices

Positioning, Agency, and Community

Cover Image
Hardback
eBook
Summary
Summary
  • Multimodalities and Chinese Students’ L2 Practices: Identity, Community, and Literacy explores the complex relations and interactions among multimodality, positioning, and agency in increasingly digitized, multilingual, and multicultural contexts. Min Wang uses interview narratives, WeChat exchanges, and class observations and field notes of three Chinese international students’ lived experiences of English learning to show that these L2 learners recognized and appropriated multiple modes and digital tools for their L2 literacies practices. They used multimodalities to position themselves as L2 users who are confident, able, and competent, but sometimes also struggling and ambivalent. The practice of meaning-making, remaking, designing, and redesigning demonstrated their agency as L2 learners. Positioned as cultural and social beings, these L2 learners presented their self-understandings and self-representations through symbolic and material artifacts, interactions with local and non-local people, and engagement in WeChat discussions and ELI learning. They assumed rights, obligations, and expectations in order to become legitimate community members. In the process their agency was promoted, negotiated, or sometimes limited by micro-social structures and ongoing interactions.
Details
Details
  • Lexington Books
    Pages: 178 • Trim: 6¼ x 9
    978-1-4985-9456-1 • Hardback • March 2020 • $105.00 • (£81.00)
    978-1-4985-9457-8 • eBook • March 2020 • $45.00 • (£35.00)
    Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Sociolinguistics, Foreign Language Study / English as a Second Language, History / Asia / General, Education / Teaching Methods & Materials / Language Arts, Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Applied Linguistics
Author
Author
  • Min Wang is assistant professor of TESOL in the department of education specialties at St. John’s University.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Foreword

    Introduction

    Part 1 Theories and Methodology

    Chapter 1 Theories, Setting, and Methods

    Part 2 Narrating L2 Learners’ Cultural Experiences

    Chapter 2 Stories of Chinese Names and Keepsakes

    Part 3 Life in America

    Chapter 3 Narratives of Embarrassing Experiences and Attempts for Opportunities

    Chapter 4 Interactions in the WeChat Discussion Group

    Chapter 5 Practicing L2 Literacies in the ELI

    Part 4 Conclusion and Implications

    Chapter 6 Concluding Remarks and Takeaways

    Bibliography

    About the Author

Reviews
Reviews
  • As a timely response to L2 learning in the globalized and digitalized world, the book offers fresh insights into empowering young adult L2 learners to exercise agency to gain membership in different communities of practices and provides educational researchers and practitioners with implications for promoting culturally relevant pedagogies in the ecology of L2 classrooms.


    — Journal of Pragmatics


    "Min Wang’s fine-grained case study of three Chinese learners of English in the USA provides much insight into the way international students navigate complex transnational identities. A timely and important contribution to our understanding of language learning in the digital age."
    — Bonny Norton, University of British Columbia, Canada


    "Min Wang has conducted a careful analysis of the positioning moves and agentive actions of three Chinese students learning English in a university-based language institute in the U.S. By examining multiple dimensions of these students’ positioning work across time, through varied modalities, and in different locations—both physical and virtual, Wang provides a powerful demonstration of how identity, agency and language learning are interdependent phenomena. Applied linguists and other scholars will welcome this important contribution to the growing body of research using holistic, ecological approaches when examining agency and language learning."
    — Elizabeth Miller, University of North Carolina


    "In this book, the reader will see how young adult L2 learners develop multimodal and multilingual literacies and navigate their positional identities as a capable community member in a social context. This is an excellent contribution to the second language field with important theoretical and practical insights."
    — Bogum Yoon, State University of New York at Binghamton


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