Theorizing and Analyzing Agency in Second Language Learning : Interdisciplinary Approaches

This book showcases how language learner agency can be understood and researched from varying perspectives by providing, for the first time, a collection of diverse approaches in one volume. The volume is organised into three main sections:the first sections offers an introduction to varying theoretical approaches to agency; the second section presents analyses of agency in a variety of empirical studies; and the third section focuses on the pedagogical implications of data-based studies of agency. The volume includes the work of researchers working in languages including English (ESL and EFL), Greek, Spanish, Swedish, Italian, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Truku (an indigenous language in Taiwan) and with both child and adult language learners. This collection will serve as a key reference for researchers of language learning and teaching, sociolinguistics and language and identity.

Ping Deters is a Professor in the English Language Institute of Seneca College in Toronto, Canada.

Xuesong (Andy) Gao is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales. His current research interests are in the areas of learner autonomy, language learning narratives, language education policy, and language teacher education. He is co-editor of System: An International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics.

Elizabeth R. Miller (Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where she is Associate Chair and Director of Undergraduate Programs. Her current research focuses on language teacher identity, agency and emotions and has been published in journals such as Applied Linguistics, TESOL Quarterly, Language Teaching Research, System, and the Modern Language Journal, among others. She has published a monograph and three co-edited volumes with Multilingual Matters and one co-edited volume with Bloomsbury Publishers.

Gergana Vitanova is a Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Central Florida, USA.