Expressing and perceiving identity and intentions in a second language: a preliminary exploratory study of the effect of (extra)curricular contact on sociolinguistic development

ABSTRACT

This exploratory study examines the effect of (extra)curricular target-language contact on learners’ abilities to perceive and to express identity and intentions in a second language (L2). Drawing on the self-reported abilities of 38 Canadian French-as-a-second-language learners during interviews and via questionnaires, preliminary qualitative analysis yielded three groups: learners able to both perceive the identity and intentions of others and able to express their own; those reporting only the perceptive ability; and those reporting neither ability. Further, most learners who provided examples of sociolinguistic variants they had learned during extracurricular contact were from the first of these three groups. Finally, preliminary analysis revealed a positive connection between the self-reporting of both abilities and increased (extra)curricular L2 exposure.

KEYWORDS:

• L2 identity and intentions
• sociolinguistic competence
• L2 extracurricular exposure
• FSL learners

Acknowledgement

We would like to acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for the funding that supported the larger research project on which this paper is based, as well as the two anonymous reviewers from this journal whose comments helped to strengthen our draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ivan Lasan is a Master of Arts candidate in the Language and Literacies Education program at OISE/University of Toronto. His research interests include sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence of foreign and second language learners, particularly their perception and production of stylistic variation. In 2005 he received a master’s degree and teaching certification in English and Slovak from the Faculty of Arts at Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. He taught English as a foreign language before moving to Canada in 2012.

Katherine Rehner is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of Language Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where she is also the coordinator of programmes in Language Teaching and Learning. Her graduate appointment is in the Language and Literacies Education program at OISE/University of Toronto. Her research focuses primarily on the sociolinguistic development of first and second language speakers of French in Canada.

ORCiD

Ivan Lasan http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7305-2360

Notes

1 Recall that because of the small number of L2 learners in the current study, statistical analysis of the data was not feasible. However, the percentage results are suggestive of general trends that are discussed here in detail.