A Study On Chinese EFL Learners’ Identity In Oral Communication From A Translanguaging Perspective

In the new era,the identity of foreign language talents has become a research hot spot in the field of second language acquisition,which to some extent concerns the national position of foreign language talents.However,relevant studies have mostly been carried out to analyze the identity of foreign language teachers,but the studies on the identity of foreign language learners are relatively weak.Moreover,relevant studies on the latter have not been fully probed in the translanguaging aspect.Therefore,this study aims to explore Chinese English as a foreign language(EFL)learners’ identity in oral communication from a translanguaging perspective.Based on the theory of translanguaging,this study explores the following three research questions:(1)In which situations will the EFL learners use translanguaging in the classroom oral tasks?(2)Regarding the topic of purchasing Chinese and foreign goods,what kind of identities will the EFL learners construct?(3)How does translanguaging assists EFL learners in constructing identities?In order to answer the above research questions,this study selected 40 students from an international studies university in southwest China as the research subjects.The research corpus is selected from an oral class and the topic is “Do you prefer to buy Chinese goods or foreign goods when shopping?” This topic was discussed freely for ten to fifteen minutes.Then the author transcribed these recordings with software Nvivo12 to summarize the situations in which students used translanguaging.At the same time,after encoding the corpus by using Nvivo12,the author analyzed what identities the students constructed.In addition,starting from the four dimensions of the conversation analysis framework,this paper analyzed the representative classroom fragments,so as to find out how translanguaging helps students construct identity.Major findings of this thesis are as follows:Firstly,students use translanguaging in the following seven situations.The first one is to debate and carry out extensive discussion;the second one is to share vivid stories;the third one is to brainstorm and find ideas;the fourth one is to use playful words related to the current task;the fifth one is to freely express personal views and personal speeches;the sixth one is to compete for leadership among team members and the last one is to explain the meaning of words to partners.Secondly,the study finds that the construction of students’ identities are not fixed.Regarding the topic of purchasing Chinese and foreign goods,students have constructed five kinds of identities in the oral English class.The first is the brand quality supporters.The second one is opponents of seclusion.The third one is disseminators of cultural confidence.The fourth one is promoters of Chinese economic development and the last one is resisters of fake and inferior products.Thirdly,the study finds that translanguaging plays a certain role in helping students construct their identity.First of all,translanguaging can help students emphasize their own views and positions to construct identity.Secondly,translanguaging can help students to mobilize the diversified knowledge reserves in their minds to show their identity.Finally,translanguaging can make students more actively engage in topic discussion,improve their involvement and participation,and then help to construct identity.This study not only provides rich empirical data for the research on student identity in the field of applied linguistics,but also proves the variability and diversity of students’ identities in a classroom discussion from a micro perspective,providing a new way to understand and explore students’ identities.At the same time,this study expands the research field and direction of identity construction,and plays a certain reference role for the subsequent research on translanguaging and identity construction.