Negotiating L2 selves in English as a foreign language learning motivational dialogues: The story of an English major in China

This study aims to demonstrate how the model of motivational dialogue can be adopted to explore an English as a foreign language (EFL) learner's English language learning motivation using real-time data collected in the Chinese context. Highlighting the role of language used by the learner and her lecturer as central to the circulation of discourses, this study adopts a method that is personal, embodied, located, and lived in her own learning contexts. It is a six-month critical ethnography that focuses on how an English major negotiated her ideal and ought-to L2 selves while attending an English language learning course in a B.A. program. The participant's interindividual dialogues were obtained through classroom observation, with fieldnotes, audio recordings, and photos of lectures as data. In contrast, her intraindividual dialogues were collected through her weekly online diaries and narratives. Results indicate that the English lecturer adopted a technological approach to English language teaching, with passing a national standardized test of English as a predetermined goal set by the lecturer. This endpoint shaped how the participant negotiated her ideal L2 self as a diligent, legitimate learner of English and her ought-to L2 self as a successful test taker. The conflicts occurring between the lecturer and the participant added to the negative emotions triggered by her own inner conflicts between her ideal and ought-to L2 self due to her resentment of the traditional teaching method and exam-oriented pedagogy adopted by the lecturer. Copyright © 2023 WICAL.