Telling Our Truths: Exploring Issues of Immigration, Identity, and Literacy with Adult Language Learners

• Main Author: Handman Sheppard, Emma Claire
• Other Authors: Simon, Rob
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: Adult Language Learners; English as a Second Language; Critical Pedagogy; New Literacies Studies; Practitioner Research; Identity; Immigration; Poetry; 0727
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/43991

This thesis explores the issues of immigration and identity that inform the experiences of adult English language learners and which can be addressed within a classroom context. Using practitioner research and an explicitly critical approach to literacy and learning, I conducted a six week workshop at a community English language school in New York City, working with eleven adult learners to discuss their lives in their native countries, decisions to move to the United States, and experiences living in a new country and learning English in an attempt to understand how those factors shape their learning and could be incorporated into the curriculum. This workshop used poetry as a means for students’ self-expression and demonstrated the importance of inviting adult immigrant students into collaborative, co-constructive learning environments where their lived experiences are at the core of their language learning process in order to allow for an inclusive negotiation of identity.