Identity Investment for Identity Empowerment: Implications of Task-based Learning in a Language Course for Immigrants

Abstract

The study builds on the notion of identity investment as developed in sociocultural approaches to language learning in order to explore course design properties which can motivate language learners’ engagement in the learning process. Data are drawn from an ethnographically oriented large-scale project of teaching Greek to diverse social groups of immigrants in the Greek context. Social empowerment and learners’ autonomy towards learning were set as the pedagogical axes of the project. In terms of teaching methodology, an action-oriented version of task-based language learning was selected for the development of the syllabus. Qualitative analysis of teachers’ diaries and observation reports of various classes’ sessions suggested that learners appeared to be best engaged in multimodal, collaborative, project-oriented tasks which directly correspond to their needs and value aspects of their linguistic and cultural capital. © Common Ground Research Networks, Eleni Gana, Evgenia Vassilaki, Roula Kitsiou, Maria Papdopoulou, All Rights Reserved.