EFL Students’ Social Identities Construction Through Gender-Based Short Stories

Abstract

This research study took place in a public school in Bogota with 38 students from 7th grade who were among 12 and 16 years of age. This qualitative action research intends (a) to identify discourses students draw on to construct social identities in the EFL classroom b) to describe social identities constructed discursively in relation to gender-based short stories and c) to study the potential relationship between these discursively constructed social identities in gendered-related reading activities and foreign language learning. Data was collected by observing and analyzing three pedagogical units, which were designed by following the stages of the Task Based Learning Approach (TBL). Besides that, I used field notes, video and audio recordings and students´ artifacts. Data was analyzed by following the steps proposed by Grounded theory (GT) (Charmaz, 2006) and the principles of Critical Classroom Discourse Analysis (CCDA) (Kumaravadivelu, 1999). Data revealed a main category and three subcategories, which showed the relationship between the gender-based short stories read by the students and the identities they portrayed during the lessons.