From a Coastline Classroom to an International Congress

By
Coast CCA
Published: September 29, 2009Posted in: Conference Reports
From a Coastline Classroom to an International Congress
Lane Igoudin, M.A., Ph.D.
Adjunct ESL Instructor, Coastline Community College

In the late summer of 2008, I found myself in an unusual situation: my classes were to start the following week, but I was on a plane to Europe. With a lot of excitement and some trepidation, I was heading to Essen, Germany, to participate in the 15th World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA 2008).

Known as ‘the Olympics of applied linguistics’, this distinguished academic gathering takes place every 3 years, moving each time from one continent to another. It attracts hundreds of university scholars from around the world who study language acquisition, use, choice, and attitudes, as well as language educators and policy makers.
I was simply humbled to have two of my papers accepted for presentation at AILA. I have been teaching in the Coastline ESL program since Spring 2006, and though I enjoy research, I am primarily a teacher. My research topics are based on what goes on in the language classroom, and the students I see day in and day out. As an educator, I care about their uptake and progress in my classes, but I am also curious why they are in my class, what specifically drives them to take language classes, especially at advanced levels when it is no longer a matter of survival.
The findings have been surprising. I found that much of their motivation lies not in the instrumental benefits derived from a better knowledge of English, but in their integrative aspirations – their wanting to become part of the English-speaking community, its culture, and its life. Furthermore, their engagement in advanced language learning often originates in the discrepancy between their current and desired social identities, i.e., how they see themselves now and want to be seen long-term. In this process, language learning becomes a path to bridging the gap.
I spent several months prior to the congress revising my papers and preparing Power-points and handouts. Both 30-minute presentations, “Social Identity and Motivation for Advanced Formal L2 Learning: Exploring the Connection” and “Asian American Girls at the Crossroads of Language and Identity,” were well-attended with 25-40 people in the audience. The latter, in particular, was included in a special symposium titled “Multilingual Identities: New Perspectives on Immigrant Discourse,” which will result in a book publication in the series “New Trends in Applied Linguistics” published by Mouton de Gruyter, an academic press. You can view both papers on my website at http://languagearts.cypresscollege.edu/~aigoudin/
In several short days, I attended 20 other presentations, as well as a number of receptions and other gatherings with colleagues. The opportunity to access the most current advances in my field, to debate and contribute to some of the issues under discussion, made the trip a truly inspiring experience. I felt there was a particular interest in my presentations exactly because my field practitioner’s perspective could offer a fresh look or intriguing data sometimes inaccessible to university-level academics. Through presentations and discussions I felt I gained a better insight in the motivation and socialization processes underlying my ESL students’ language acquisition.

The experience of spending a week in a country where I didn’t speak a word of the local language was itself refreshing to me as a language instructor. Despite my expectations, English was rarely spoken in this part of Germany. It put me, to some extent, in the shoes of my own students, giving me a glimpse of their struggles and survival strategies in a foreign language environment. I had to reassess my own attitudes towards my students, and I feel it enhanced my respect for them, as well as patience with their learning.
The Coast CCD CCA-CTA Union was most helpful in offering funding to offset some of the costs of my trip. I am also grateful to the ESL Department for providing a substitute during my time away. I listed Coastline College as a workplace affiliation in my presentations and believe that my participation illustrates the strength of scholarly research done at our college.