Digital texts of identity: A valuable tool for the study of identity construction and language learning in EFL

Abstract

The present study focuses on the analysis of identity in digital texts of identity produced by English as a foreign language (EFL) students. The general aim of this study is to promote the use of these texts as a strategy of the teaching for linguistic transfer and academic expertise approach (Cummins, 2001, 2005b, 2006) and the reinforcement of the family-school relationship (Coll & Falsafi, 2010). Identity texts enable students to build and evaluate their identities, so that they become aware of who they are as language learners, consolidating the different positions that shape their identities, establishing relationships with identities of competence they desire, and rejecting negative positions that silence them when communicating in the target language. This promotes the development of their cognitive and academic language proficiency skills (CALPS) and, in the case of digital texts of identity, their digital competence. For this study, a total of 51 digital texts of identity were collected and analyzed following a ‛positioning’ perspective (Davies & Harré, 1990) that was combined with thematic and dialogic/performative analysis (Block, 2010), and a descriptive quantitative approach. Results illustrate a balance in the presence of reflexive and interactive positioning in the texts, with the former emerging through different subject positions that were occasionally opposed, and were enacted through descriptive and justifying acts, and the latter adopting the form of direct and indirect interactions with the viewer.