Week three reflection --identity and poststructuralist

One of the biggest hardships that most of immigrants are confronting is the language barrier. Just like the story told by Martina, many immigrants were hoping for a brand-new life with full visions of happiness. However, many realities showed us that the problem with immigrant’s language barriers have stopped them from chasing their dreams in their new countries. In addition, many of them also have the difficulties defining their identities as well. “Identity signals the way a person understands her or his relationship to the world, how their relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future”(Norton 61). A person has various identities, and some of he identities might be constrained or limited by the language barriers; especially in the “immigrant” identity to fully involved in their second language communities. People in this community judge people based on their language skills first, although many of the immigrants possesses brilliant thoughts and beautiful minds. Oftentimes, immigrant people want to learn second language, but the conditions and the resources are so limited that makes the second language learning experience so hard. Bakhtin saw “language learning as a process of struggling to use language to participate in specific speech communities”(63). The real problems of why immigrants often have so hard experience of learning second language is because they do not have the perfect practice time and occasions.

The vignette two and is about the identities building in classroom settings. The question being raised that whether identities can be taught in the classrooms is unknown. What obvious is that the teachers can help her or his students identity shaping by exchanging the roles in the classroom settings. With realization of multiple identities in the classroom, poststructuralist can help students to develop their identities and enhance student language learning experiences without resistance.