Introduction

The research described in this book is rooted in my decade-long interest in what it is that helps students participate genuinely in learning activities that they consider personally relevant, and how these factors could be turned into learning capital in the classroom. Many library shelves have been filled with books about how to motivate students to learn, but we sometimes forget a simple truth that Kohn (1993: 198–199) reminds us of:

... children do not need to be motivated. From the beginning they are hungry to make sense of their world. Given an environment in which they don't feel controlled and in which they are encouraged to think about what they are doing (rather than how well they are doing it), students of any age will generally exhibit an abundance of motivation and a healthy appetite for challenge.

A control-free environment that nurtures personal growth and an appetite for challenge is particularly needed in adolescence – a child's apprenticeship to responsible self-determined functioning in society. Given teenagers' increasing bids for independence and autonomy, contexts that do not support their explorations and personally relevant choices lead to frustration and conflict. The situation is further complicated by the different relational contexts in which a teenager functions: family, school, peer groups and so on. If interactions with adults are restrictive and unappreciative of one's individuality, there is often a peer group that is happy to accept a youngster on condition that a particular code of conduct is adopted. Depending on the nature of the adopting group, this can be either detrimental or beneficial. Superficially displayed attitudes can end up reshaping one's identity, but it is a totally different matter if the change is triggered by, for example, a questionable street gang or by a well-intended teacher.

The developmental stage when identity processes are at their most complex peak – adolescence – is also the period when most foreign language learning occurs, given that foreign languages are usually studied in secondary school. Identity complexities inherent in adolescence therefore overlap with the identity complexities that are inherent in language learning. It is sometimes said that learning a language means learning a new identity. Being an adolescent also means learning a new identity: the identity that one will manifest in one's community, at the hub of an intricate network of social relationships. Just as a new language is learnt by trial and error, by pronouncing a word wrong until one gets it right or by making a grammatical mistake until it does not feel 'right' anymore, in the same way teenagers learn 'who they are' by trying out and discarding alternative selves until one of them meets with social approval and gets adopted and sometimes internalised into their own identity.

Foreign language classes can be either a curse or a blessing for an adolescent's emerging sense of self. Expressing ourselves in a language different from our own might expose us to ridicule, projecting a vulnerable self in the eyes of peers who may have fun counting our mistakes. However, expressing ourselves in a foreign language can also be an excellent tool for identity exploration, and that is especially relevant during adolescence, when identity exploration is of paramount importance. Genuinely communicative language classes would appear, in this light, as the most suited to identity development of all academic subjects. As long as students have learnt to express themselves fluently, the teaching has been successful. But for this they need to be able to express themselves, to talk about what worries and what thrills them, as well as about what helps them engage more and learn better. When such communication occurs in the foreign language itself, the teacher gains crucial insights into the learners' own motivational processes, while the students gain socio-communicative competence that they will be able to use later, in real-life encounters, besides exploring and consolidating their identity through this very communication. One could almost say that successful foreign language classes are CLIL lessons where the subject matter is the student's own identity.

However, the overlapping complexities inherent in adolescence and foreign language learning are not the only double-edged challenge in class. The classroom is a space where two socio-relational contexts overlap. Whereas the teacher is just a teacher at all times (except, perhaps, when the class is being observed by a superior member of staff), students are always both students and classmates, having to juggle with often contradictory social expectations: will they be (or pretend to be) hardworking and please the teacher, or will they be (or pretend to be) sworn enemies of learning and please their work-avoidant peers? The ensuing identity negotiations necessary to avoid conflicts are also encountered in adolescents' personal lives, when being in the same place with one's parents and one's best friends would often require the diplomatic display of particular context-dependent identities. It is these spiralling 'complications' that make foreign language learners' identity such a rewarding research topic.

Starting from such considerations, and having completed a study with Romanian learners of English as a foreign language (Taylor, 2008), which revealed a vast array of manipulative-escapist behaviours that students displayed in class when they were not appreciated personally and their views were not taken into account (see also Taylor, 2013a), an investigation into what helps students feel appreciated in class was a natural continuation for my research interests.

Research Background

This book reports on a research project that aimed to facilitate a better understanding of the adolescent foreign language learner caught in a web of social relations that may not always be self-actualising, with particular emphasis on the factors that may help learners feel personally appreciated in class and the ways in which these factors could be used to enhance their engagement and achievement. My chosen research context was the Romanian secondary-school system, because it is a context with which I am familiar both as a student and as a teacher,...