Simon Coffey

Discursive worlds of the language learner: a narrative analysis

The analysis of autobiographical narratives has recently been cited as extending our understanding of many key constructs in second language acquisition (SLA) theory. Such approaches take language learning beyond the acquisition/assimilation of linguistic structures to focus on learners as social selves actively enacting a range of social identities through engagement with the “language learning project”. In this article I discuss the theoretical framing for my PhD research for which I analysed the written and spoken language learning (his)stories of six British language “learners” aged between 30 and 62. In telling their stories, learners have recourse to a number of discursive worlds which structure their agency both as language learners and as story-tellers. The interpretive approach used in this study may help us to understand not only how a learner may move diachronically through different identity positions but how these positions are discursively structured.

Language teachers' narratives of practice

This book is a welcome addition to the growing literature that aims to give voice to, and thereby value to, first person accounts of language learning. The volume consists of 18 chapters, the first is the Introduction and each of the remaining 17 is an autobiographical essay, mostly written by an individual but a few chapters are shared, recounting teachers’ narratives of their experience of language learning and becoming a teacher. The stories in each chapter trace memories of contacts with ‘other’ languages and how these contacts burgeoned into a life of engaging with language learning and teaching. The editors, Lesley Harbon and Robyn Maloney, are both associate professors in language education at the respective universities of Sydney and Macquarie. The book is a eulogy to multilingualism and how individual visions intersect with wider societal constraints to drive personal and professional choices. In the Preface, the authors tell their own stories, presented as ‘personal journeys in languages and cultures education’ (xiii). Both authors grew up in Anglo-Australian communities and recount their contact with neighbours speaking foreign languages, school languages and trips abroad. Their stories, like those that follow in subsequent chapters, are told with warmth and humility. Particularly telling of the Australian flavour is Robyn Maloney’s recognition of the ‘culture shock’ she experienced when:

Communicating Constructions of Frenchness through Language Coursebooks: A Comparison

French is the most studied foreign language in the UK and, despite its reported decline as a subject of study in some countries, it retains a strong position in the world as a taught language. The association of French with particular cultural representations of Frenchness, which are both metropolitan and global under the auspices of la Francophonie, remains strong in learners’ imaginary. This strong language-culture association can favour the promotion of French but can also generate an image problem of French as elitist, outdated, even feminised, and inaccessible. In this chapter I compare a UK-produced coursebook, which is linked to the specific aims of the English national curriculum culminating in the French General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examination, with a more globally targeted French-produced coursebook designed to teach francais langue etrangere (FLE) in a variety of contexts. I consider the implications of the specific curriculum constraints of a restricted UK schools market versus a more open global market, how communicative contexts are conveyed through the language presented as well as how images, topics and storylines position different users in narratives of Frenchness. In the highly contested space of modern language learning, where different languages compete for cultural, educational and communicative significance, this type of analysis can extend our understanding of how coursebooks construct and package language and cultural identities in ways which attract or exclude.