College Students’ Identity Negotiation Through Teacher Feedback and Revision in EFL Writing

Abstract

This qualitative study explores how EFL writer identities are negotiated, imposed, or assumed while they attend to teacher feedback and utilize it in their revisions. The study focused on two college students: K and J. The data came from interviews with each student and students’ drafts, first and final, for each of four assignments, along with their teacher’s comments. For K and J, some identities were ascribed by their native English-speaking teacher, while others were claimed by the individual her or himself. J was very comfortable with the assumed identity of a non-native speaker, while K struggled to negotiate her identity as an EFL writer, resisting the suggestions of her native English-speaking teacher in revisions. K, with a strong sense of self, made her own choices about which identity she would choose from her available repertoire. She quite deliberately gained a L2 writer identity. For J, his ideological subjectivity as a dependent foreigner in an EFL writing classroom did not foster a stronger sense of identity as a L2 writer. The teacher predominantly focused on language errors and tended to see EFL writing mostly as language practice. Consequently, his pedagogical decisions limited J’s access to a more desirable L2 writer identity.