Students' life stories in EFL learning cultural identity construction in a Bogotá public school.

Abstract

This graduation project carried out through narrative research provides an outlook of students’ perspectives towards the English language learning processes of eleventh graders at La Merced School, located in Bogotá, by the creation of life stories capturing their thoughts, struggles, customs, and beliefs on the target language. The above was achieved by gathering students’ conceptions, memories, and their academic process in productions such as artifacts, voice recordings and therefore life stories. The data was sorted into three main categories of analysis: acculturation, power relationships, and resistance. Concluding, students manifested struggles in their relations among students with high English proficiency leading to less desire to learn, even when they consider the language as fundamental to grow social and economically. In addition, students did not express a strong presence of acculturation on their daily basis.