This paper provides concrete suggestions for teaching two Holocaust testimonies, Irene Hauser's diary and Ruth Klüger's memoir "Still Alive." Hauser's and Klüger's texts effectively illustrate the differences between diaries and memoirs while recounting similar experiences. Such a comparative analysis, I argue, achieves two goals: First,…

Drawing on recent developments within sociolinguistics, the objective of the current article is to explore how six pre-service teachers (PSTs) discursively positioned themselves and 'the multilingual' across two narrating events focused on their lived experience of language. The narrating events were focus groups with other PSTs (N = 24) and the…

This article examines the results of a 17-week self-narrative portfolio project from a year seven classroom in Turkey. The practitioner research combines the frameworks of Cultural Historical Activity Theory and Figured Words in order to assess the differences in linguistic and identity growth between national and international students. I posit…

Memoirs and autobiographical writing on language learning provide perspectives on migration and residence in North America and Europe for the most part, where struggle and loss are some of the recurrent themes (Aneta Pavlenko 2001a; Besemeres 2004; Kinginger 2004a). An unaddressed aspect of foreign language learning remains the 'reverse'…

Deficiency-oriented attitudes are still common occurrences despite growing emphasis on linguistic and cultural diversity. Promoting inclusivity in learning, Herrera (2016) proposed "biography-driven instruction" emphasizing the power of students' assets. Though her work was intended for young learners' biliteracy, I argue that the tenets…

This paper explores my experiences as a Latina/Chicana educator from the borderlands of South Texas and acknowledges my innermost battle with identity through my own "testimonio." The purpose is to re-examine administrator and teacher language ideologies and the detrimental effect on curriculum development for all students learning in…

The Council of Europe's "Autobiography of Intercultural Encounter" (AIE) is a tool to develop intercultural competence (IC) in education by encouraging users to reflect upon and learn from momentous intercultural encounters they have experienced face to face. Its parallel resource, the "Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters…

If in Edward Said's words, "everyone lives life in a given language; everyone's experiences therefore are had, absorbed, and recalled in that language" ("Out of Place", 1999: 217), a writer who chooses to write in a language other than the mother-language is inevitably a victim of displacement. In a geography-decentred world,…

Using sociocultural and poststructuralist theoretical lenses, this study examines the narrative construction of language-learner identity across time and space. We applied cross-narrative methodologies to analyze language-learning autobiographies and interview data from three English users who had recently transitioned to a U.S. context for…

This article has at its core the unraveling of factors that have influenced the identity of those who have been caught in between two worlds (Mexico and The United States) and whom will be called pre- and in-service returnees from now on. A qualitative approach was chosen in order to delve deep into the participants' lived experiences through…

Conceptualizing learners' individuality as dynamic and contextually situated, this paper reports on an inquiry that examined the genesis of a disabled learner's success in learning foreign languages on the Chinese mainland. Using source texts such as the learner's published diaries, letters and her autobiography, the inquiry revealed that language…

This article is the culmination of the Cultural and Linguistic Autobiography (CLA) writing project, which details narrative descriptions of adult English language learners' (ELLs') cultural and linguistic experiences and how those experiences may have influenced the ways in which these learners constructed and reconstructed their identities.…

Studying a foreign language at university level is a multifaceted project entailing constant identity formation as a foreign language user--and simultaneously as a plurilingual subject. As far as the second language (L2) learner is concerned, the language learning process can be seen as a construction of a new "third place" between the…

A young college French professor has won praise for her book about the experience of learning the language. She explores her childhood, education, and socialization as a young adult to tell why and how French became important to her. (MSE)

This paper uses narrative accounts to explore intercultural experiences and the perception of the self by second language (L2) users. The analysis follows poststructuralist and postmodern theories of cultural and language identity. Extracts from the autobiographies of three chicano writers from the 1980s to the new millennium, Richard Rodriguez's…