Reconceptualizing the Social Construction of Out-of-Class Learning Opportunities Among English as a Second Language Learners in the United States

• In Event: Roundtable Session 62
  In Roundtable Session: Youth Work: Examining Empowered Spaces

Abstract

This is a one-year ethnographic study of how first year English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students socially construct learning opportunities in a four-year liberal arts college in the Midwest. The theoretical framework stems primarily from Gumperz’s (1982) interactional sociolinguistics. The research design was based on Spradley (1979, 1980). Microethnographic discourse analysis (Bloome et al 2005) was employed in the data analysis. The findings suggest that established trust, initiation, negotiation, and acknowledgement are the necessary components for a learning opportunity to be socially constructed. Four constructs were identified from the data corpus and they are reciprocity, shared identities, willingness to take risk, and conformity to social rules.

Author

• Yin Lam Lee, St John's University