LANGUAGE LEARNING ACROSS THE SCALE: PERSPECTIVES FROM BRAZILIAN ESL STUDENTS

Resumo

The present work is part of the discussion held by School of Advanced Studies in Language and Society at Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp). The aim of this paper is to discuss findings from an ESL study conducted in 2014 once many issues remained unexplored. Findings suggest that students who took part in the research are assuming a dual behaviour towards their learning. On the one hand they show interest and commitment to learning, on the other, they show insecurity and do not seem to be pro-active during class. This issue will be discussed in light of two concepts approached during the course: the notion of Scale discussed by Blommaert (2010) and the notion of Stance present in the work done by Jaffe (2009). Drawing on both concepts, the research context will be understood as affected by participant’s mobility, which allows a perspective that understands learning as influenced by external forces. We suggest that participants assume different stances as language learners, and by doing that, their concept of ‘learning’ assumes a mobile perspective as well. They seem to find their learning effective in a lower scale, positioning themselves as potential learners, whilst this belief is delegitimized when traveled to a higher scale, where they assume a stance of “no significant learner”, therefore showing a dual behaviour.

Keywords: Second Language Learning. Globalization. Stance.