Identity and Motivation: Learning to Read Simultaneously in a First and Second Language

• In Event: Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Understanding the Roles of Identity, Motivation, and Self-Efficacy in Second, Foreign, and Heritage Language Learning

Abstract

This presentation will focus on the social and psychological processes underlying three female immigrant and refugee students’ motivation to develop literacy in their first and second languages, drawing on data from a year-long qualitative study of English learners with limited and/or interrupted education (SIFE) at a large, urban U.S. high school. The students’ interactions with text illustrate how gender, immigration, and educational access informed their motivation to learn and the strategies they deployed to learn English. Implications for pedagogy and scholarship will be discussed.

Author

• Liv Thorstensson Davila, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign