The storied lives of adult immigrant women learning English in the USA and Ghana

Research in the field of adult ESL education puts much emphasis on print literacy and classroom contexts often with little attention paid to how adult immigrant women in different nation-states negotiate English language learning outside the classroom. Guided by a narrative analysis grounded in a critical sociocultural theory of literacy, this study fills this gap by focusing on the English learning experiences outside the classroom of six immigrant women enrolled in adult English as a second language (ESL) programs in the USA and Ghana. It offers an understanding of the power dynamics in two distinct language learning contexts. It highlights how learners are continually performing various identities and utilizing numerous literacy tools (language, texts, internet, computer) as they choose their level of investment in English literacy. Through in-depth interviews and document review of participants' literacy artifacts, a cross-case analysis of convergent and divergent themes of the narratives of these six immigrant women revealed the following findings: 1) Participants relied heavily on English popular media-based Discourse communities that were rich in multiliteracies (i.e., American movies and reality shows such as Keeping Up with The Kardashians) rather than those centered on traditional print texts, 2) Learners used their gendered and multilingual identities and resources to practice their English and barter for English literacy practices with native or fluent English language speakers, and 3) All learners had prior positive learning experiences with English (at home or in their host countries), held iv hegemonic ideologies about English, and strived for individual goals that encouraged their investment in using English in their Bilingual and English Discourse Communities. Although the research findings on the English learning experiences of participants across the USA and Ghana were similar, the type of English and bilingual Discourse communities each participant had access to and entered was significantly shaped by their educational status and gendered roles. These findings point to the importance of creating spaces in ESL classrooms that engage with the multilingual everyday literacy experiences of adult ESL learners outside the ESL classroom which include the use of multiliteracies. Further implications and recommendations for adult ESL programs and educators are offered.

THE STORIED LIVES OF ADULT IMMIGRANT WOMEN LEARNING ENGLISH IN THE USA AND GHANA by Josephine Amoakoh A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Education, Culture, and Society The University of Utah August 2020 Copyright © Josephine Amoakoh 2020 All Rights Reserved The University of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL The dissertation of Josephine Amoakoh has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: Verónica E. Valdez , Chair 6/9/2020 Date Approved Karen A. Johnson , Member 6/10/2020 Date Approved Leticia Alvarez Gutiérrez , Member 6/10/2020 Date Approved Dolores Calderon , Member 6/9/2020 Date Approved Joy Y. Pierce , Member 6/9/2020 Date Approved and by William A. Smith the Department/College/School of , Chair/Dean of Education, Culture, and Society and by David B. Kieda, Dean of The Graduate School. ABSTRACT Research in the field of adult ESL education puts much emphasis on print literacy and classroom contexts often with little attention paid to how adult immigrant women in different nation-states negotiate English language learning outside the classroom. Guided by a narrative analysis grounded in a critical sociocultural theory of literacy, this study fills this gap by focusing on the English learning experiences outside the classroom of six immigrant women enrolled in adult English as a second language (ESL) programs in the USA and Ghana. It offers an understanding of the power dynamics in two distinct language learning contexts. It highlights how learners are continually performing various identities and utilizing numerous literacy tools (language, texts, internet, computer) as they choose their level of investment in English literacy. Through in-depth interviews and document review of participants’ literacy artifacts, a cross-case analysis of convergent and divergent themes of the narratives of these six immigrant women revealed the following findings: 1) Participants relied heavily on English popular media-based Discourse communities that were rich in multiliteracies (i.e., American movies and reality shows such as Keeping Up with The Kardashians) rather than those centered on traditional print texts, 2) Learners used their gendered and multilingual identities and resources to practice their English and barter for English literacy practices with native or fluent English language speakers, and 3) All learners had prior positive learning experiences with English (at home or in their host countries), held hegemonic ideologies about English, and strived for individual goals that encouraged their investment in using English in their Bilingual and English Discourse Communities. Although the research findings on the English learning experiences of participants across the USA and Ghana were similar, the type of English and bilingual Discourse communities each participant had access to and entered was significantly shaped by their educational status and gendered roles. These findings point to the importance of creating spaces in ESL classrooms that engage with the multilingual everyday literacy experiences of adult ESL learners outside the ESL classroom which include the use of multiliteracies. Further implications and recommendations for adult ESL programs and educators are offered. iv For Daniel, Gabby, Kelvin & Mensah family TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................. viii Chapters 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1 Purpose of the Study ............................................................................................... 5 Research Questions ................................................................................................. 6 Significance .......................................................................................................... 12 Chapter Summary ................................................................................................. 13 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND LITERATURE REVIEW ............................ 15 Critical Sociocultural Theory of Literacy ............................................................. 17 Experiences of Immigrant Women Learning English .......................................... 30 Language Learning and Gender ............................................................................ 38 Learning English in Ghana and the USA.............................................................. 45 Chapter Summary ................................................................................................. 54 3 METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................................ 58 Research Design ................................................................................................... 60 Research Contexts................................................................................................. 61 Participants............................................................................................................ 64 Data Collection and Analysis ............................................................................... 69 My Storied Life as a Multilingual, Multicultural, and Immigrant Woman .......... 76 Ethical Considerations .......................................................................................... 79 Chapter Summary ................................................................................................. 80 4 NARRATIVE PORTRAITS OF IMMIGRANT WOMEN’S ENGLISH LEARNING EXPERIENCES ................................................................................................................ 83 The Narrative Portraits of Immigrant Women Learning English in the USA ...... 84 The Narrative Portraits of Immigrant Women Learning English in Ghana ...... 141 Chapter Summary ............................................................................................... 177 5 DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS ....................................................................... 180 Learning English Outside the Adult ESL Classroom: Looking Across Cases in Ghana and the USA ............................................................................................ 181 Implications and Recommendations for English Literacy Pedagogy with Adults Learning English as a Second Language ............................................................ 195 Limitations of the Study ..................................................................................... 200 Chapter Summary ............................................................................................... 201 Appendices A: RECRUITMENT SURVEY ...................................................................................... 203 B: INTERVIEW GUIDE ................................................................................................ 206 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 210 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Since all that I meet shall work for my good, the bitter is sweet, the medicine food; though painful at present, twill cease before long; and then, o how pleasant the conqueror’s song. –John Newton, 1725-180 [MHB:511] First, I thank God for his infinite mercies, protection, guidance, and constant faithfulness throughout this academic journey. I owe him every strength used to write this dissertation. I also thank the six women who participated in this study to give so generously of their time and share their treasured stories with me and a wider audience. Tina, Makara, Cinthy, Joy, Winnie, and Imma (pseudonyms of participants), you have been a great inspiration to me. You have pushed and supported me with your unwavering commitment to answer my calls irrespective of our different time zones. Thank you, Reverend Maribel Calvo of United Methodist Church and Mr. Comlan Juvence Babagbeto, the executive director of Eagle Vision Institute for opening your doors to me to make this study possible. My sincere gratitude goes to the Department of Education, Culture, & Society for financial support during all my years in the Ph.D. program and the wealth of learning provided through my teaching assistantship. I would like to thank the members of my committee: Dr. Karen Johnson; Dr. Leticia Alvarez Gutiérrez; Dr. Dolores Calderon, and Dr. Joy Pierce for their wisdom and insights, their encouragement, and their patience throughout my dissertation journey. My chair, Dr. Verónica E. Valdez, has also been a strong pillar of support in this journey. I treasure her mentorship as an educator, researcher, and also her friendship. These women have shaped my educational trajectory and have been critical to my successful completion of this journey. There have been friends and colleagues who have made this process enjoyable, bearable, and possible. Thank you, Adeli Ynostroza, for your comic relief and insights. Thank you, Dr. Delila Omerbašić for your support and encouragement. I would also like to thank my family for their constant encouragement and support. Daniel, I am grateful for your support and love, which has propelled me through this journey. I also acknowledge my cheerleader and daughter, Gabby. You started reading my big books at the age of three and have never stopped telling me to be brave! Kelvin, my son, thank you for your help, support and understanding. Thank you to the Mensah family for your good wishes, prayers and support. My sister Elizabeth, and brothers Joseph and Emmanuel, were great prayer warriors and emotional support to me through this journey. To my beloved Dad Joseph and my mum Elizabeth, I am grateful for your mentorship and wisdom. My sincere gratitude also goes to the Morkeh family, Gertrude, and her family and the Ghanaian community in Salt Lake City for their numerous forms of support and encouragement. ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION English literacy is considered a basic necessity in the 21st-century world (Hsu, 2017; Phillipson, 2017). The worth of English in our current society dwells on how it is embraced over the world as the language of education, civilization, power, and access to social goods (Coleman, 2010; Edu-Buandoh, 2016; Phillipson, 2017; Seargeant & Erling, 2013). The traditional conception of literacy is synonymous with English and linked to the ability to read and write in English (Edu-Buandoh, 2016). English has turned out to be the measure of literacy and upward social mobility, thereby making it the world’s most studied language (Coleman, 2010). At least one billion people are learning English globally, with more non-native speakers (NNSs) than native speakers of English (Graddol, 2006). English literacy also becomes a necessity for immigrants in English speaking countries such as the USA and Ghana, since it is often considered a pathway to employment and positive social life experiences for most adult immigrants (Darvin & Norton, 2015; Warriner, 2015). As former British colonies, there are parallels between the USA and Ghana about the use of English amidst diverse languages. Thus, even though Ghana and USA occupy different geographical locations on the globe, and are populated by people with diverse linguistic backgrounds, English is the language for 2 education, commerce, politics, and government in both countries. Ghana serves as a host to people from other West African countries who have diverse linguistic backgrounds. It is surrounded by mostly francophone countries and also is bounded by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) treaty which offers free mobility between West African countries such as Togo, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso. The USA just like Ghana continues to experience an influx of refugees and immigrants from nonEnglish speaking backgrounds. For example, the population of immigrants in the USA increased by 4.6 million people between 2010 and 2017 with most immigrants coming from non-English speaking backgrounds such as Cuba, Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Venezuela, Nigeria and Colombia (Institute of International Education (IIE), 2018; Zong & Batalova, 2019). Therefore, these two countries serve as fertile grounds for comparative studies on English literacy in adult English as a second language (ESL) context. In 2018, adult immigrants accounted for 80% of the 26.6 million limited English proficient individuals in the USA (Zong & Batalova, 2019). Most adult ESL programs provide classes that help recent immigrants access employment and community resources and integrate into their new societies (Martinez, 2010; Warriner, 2007). In Ghana, many private and government English language learning institutes for adult learners abound with most students from neighboring Francophone countries. The explicit aim of most of these programs is to help adult immigrants acquire literacy and proficiency in English as quickly as possible. There is a robust institutional assumption that English is merely a set of technical and neutral skills that learners need to acquire under formal settings (Baker, 2011). The danger of this assumption is that more emphasis is on the English language as 3 oral, written or embodied speech, neglecting the social contexts in which learners are situated as they learn English inside and outside the ESL classroom. This assumption does not provide a nuanced understanding of English language and literacy acquisition. In the current diverse society, literacy involves the use of different languages, cultures, textual representations and technologies in meaning-making across different contexts. Thus, an adult immigrant ESL learner may need to practice many kinds of literacy across different contexts. For example, the literacy needs of the home may be entirely different from the literacy required at work, school, or in the community. Problematically, research in the field of linguistics and second language acquisition put much emphasis on classroom contexts often with little attention paid to how adult immigrants negotiate English language learning outside the classroom. Research studies have drawn on critical sociocultural perspectives of literacy (Omerbašić, 2015; Ortmeier- Hooper, 2013; Perry, 2007; Warriner, 2007) and have found that ESL learners engage in myriad out of school literacy practices that are in stark contrast with the literacies that are encouraged or utilized in traditional classroom spaces. These out-of-school literacies have also been found to include multiliteracies (Nimmon & Begoray, 2008; Omerbasic, 2015). Multiliteracies is understood as creating spaces where identities could be enacted in daily English learning practice and engenders a variety of literacy tools brought about through cultural and language diversity and information and multimedia technologies (Knobel & Lankshear, 2007; New London Group, 1996). Multiliteracies is made up of multilingualism (knowing more than one language including previously acquired languages) and multimodality (technology, internet, print, audio, visual and gestural modes of communication) (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009). Thus, literacy tools include both 4 language and multiple modes and are defined as multiliteracies that learners use to achieve their goals, develop their knowledge, and participate fully in their selected Discourse communities. Multiliteracies also reflect the power dynamics negotiated daily by ESL learners through their acts of agency in Discourse communities. Discourse communities are learning spaces in which groupings of people not only face-to-face or actual in-the-moment groupings, but also ideational groupings across time and space, share ways of knowing, thinking, believing, acting, and communicating as well as using various tools and technology (Gee, 1996; Moje & Lewis, 2007). This means that there are socially accepted ways of using language, acting, believing, valuing, feeling, and using a multiliteracies repertoire to identify oneself within Discourse communities. This process involves the enactment of various identities and agency. Identities are conceptualized not as a stable core nor a cluster of social images, but as temporary social positioning, constructed moment to moment through language/discourses in social interaction (Weedon, 1987, 2004). Thus, identities are multiple, a site of struggle, and continually changing over time and space (Darvin & Norton, 2015; Weedon, 2004). A person’s identities are not coherent or fixed, but multiple, contradicting, and changeable (Weedon, 2004). Identities are constantly enacted as we negotiate new subject positions at the crossroads of the past, present, and future (Block, 2007). Agency is activated as learners choose multiliteracies and enact multiple identities across Discourse communities. Agency in this study is defined as investment in Discourse communities. It involves using a multiliteracies repertoire and having a desire to participate in interactions within bilingual or monolingual Discourse communities. 5 Investment, as coined by Norton (2000b, 2013), reflects a socially and historically situated relationship between a language learner and a target language based on the forms of capital learners possess, their social positions (real and imagined) and the ideological discourses surrounding the target language (Darvin & Norton, 2015). For example, ESL learners may invest in English, with the understanding that it will equip them with symbolic capital and social power. Symbolic capital refers to the prestige or recognition given to individuals based on their possession of socially prescribed valuable resources (Bourdieu, 1986). An individual who can speak English fluently can acquire gainful employment which can be a conduit for the attainment of the symbolic status of an elite. Thus, when investing in a second language, learners can acquire materials (such as money) and symbolic gains (such as professional certifications, status as fluent English language speakers). An investment in a second language increases the learner’s access to resources for thriving in their new environment and gives them opportunities to enact multiple identities. Thus, to better understand the out-of-school literacies of adult ESL learners, it is essential to explore how issues of power, agency, and identities shape an individual’s investment in learning English literacies. Unfortunately, these issues barely gain attention in research studies involving adult immigrant learners of English as a second language. I used these issues as the pillars to frame this research study. Purpose of the Study The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of adult immigrant women’s English literacy experiences and their engagement in English Discourse communities outside ESL classrooms. I focused on how these communities shaped their 6 agentic investment in learning English as well as how they shaped these communities through their enactments of identities and agency. Examining the English learning experiences of adult immigrant women outside the ESL classroom will fill in a gap in the academic literature of adult ESL learners. Specifically, it will enhance our understanding of the power dynamics in language learning contexts and how learners are performing various identities, including and utilizing numerous literacy tools (language, texts, internet, and computer) within Discourse communities. Also, by studying the agentic and identity performances of adult immigrant women outside ESL classroom contexts through their literacy practices, this study may offer recommendations for improving the English literacy experiences of adult immigrant women. Focusing on their agentic investments in learning English will help disrupt a monolithic representation of adult ESL learners as passively engaging in and parroting classroom-based English instruction. Furthermore, an understanding of the rich, everyday literacy experiences of adult ESL learners will help provide insight for teachers and policymakers regarding crafting lessons and curricula that will connect classroom literacy experiences to a learner's outside classroom literacy experiences. Research Questions This qualitative study focused on the narratives of six adult immigrant women enrolled in ESL programs in the USA and Ghana to explore their enactment of identities and agency through their use of literacy tools and their investments in the Discourse communities that use English outside ESL classrooms. Methodologically, I collected qualitative data in the form of online interviews, site observation, and digital documents 7 between March 2016 and December 2018. Two institutions that were 7000 miles apart provided data for this study. These institutions were in Accra, Ghana, and Safford AZ, USA. These selected institutions offered English as Second Language classes for immigrants from around the world. Participants for this study were three immigrant women from neighboring Francophone countries learning English in Ghana and three immigrant women from South America learning English in the USA. Within- and crosscase (Merriam, 2009) and narrative analysis (Reissman, 1993; 2008) were used to examine their English learning experiences. This approach helped map their stories to illuminate the influences of power embedded in micro- and macrolevel contexts on their English language learning, the heterogeneity and fluidity of their identities, as well as their agency, as learners invested in Discourse communities outside the ESL classroom. Specifically, this qualitative study focused on the following research questions: For adult immigrant women enrolled in ESL programs in the USA and Ghana, 1) What do their stories about their daily experiences with English outside the ESL classroom reveal about their identities within the English Discourse communities they engage with as they learn English? 2) What literacy tools do these women use in these English Discourse communities? How do they use them? Who do they use them with, and for what purpose? 3) How do their identities and their participation in English Discourse communities shape their investment in learning English? In the next sections, I highlight the essential elements of the critical sociocultural perspective of literacy and the methodology that guides this study. This theoretical and methodological approach allowed for nuanced engagement with the research questions. It helped illuminate the women’s multiple identities, literacy tools, and agentic 8 performances within their English Discourse communities. Highlights of the Theoretical Framework A critical sociocultural perspective of literacy (Darvin & Norton, 2015; Gee, 2015; New London Group, 1996; and Weedon, 2004) frames this study. A critical sociocultural perspective of literacy theorizes literacy as a situated practice that includes social interactions with the use of mediational tools within Discourse communities. Within Discourse communities, there are discourses with a small ‘d’ and Discourses with a capital D. Discourses with a small ‘d’ are language styles or varieties used in conversation to make meaning. Discourses with a capital ‘D’ are distinctive ways of communicating with others using various objects, tools, and technologies to enact specific socially recognizable identities as well as agency within Discourse communities (Gee, 1996, 2012; Lewis & Moje, 2003; Moje & Lewis, 2007; New London Group, 1996; Weedon, 2004). Thus, identities are influenced by practices common to Discourse communities as well as available resources such as multiliteracies repertoire. Also, when learners have a desire to participate in a given Discourse community, they voluntarily use literacy tools necessary to engage in that context, including various sociocultural elements such as language, technology, and multiple modalities of communication. These literacy tools are intimately tied to enacting identities and establishing a sense of agency (Knobel & Lankshear, 2007; New London Group, 1996). Agency can also be expressed behaviors based on social positions, including gender. Gender is a system of social relations and discursive practices within communities (Piller & Pavlenko, 2001). These practices, in many cases, connect to 9 personal attributes and power relations in subtle and changing ways (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1992). Language is the locus of such power and socially contested relations (Gal, 1978). Through the lens of feminist thoughts in the field of gender and language studies, the literature reveals that restructuring of gendered identities intersected with language learning for most immigrant women (Constantinidou, 1994; Cumming & Gill 1991, 1992; Fortune, 1998; Gal, 1978; Goldstein, 1995; Gordon, 2004; Gunthner, 1992; Harvey, 1994; Hill,1987; Holmes, 1993; Kouritzin, 2000; Menard-Warwick, 2004, 2009; McDonald, 1994; Pavlenko, Blackledge, Piller & Teutsch-Dwyer, 2001; Rockhill, 1983; Tran & Nguyen, 1994). Gendered identity refers to identities inflected by gender and includes prescribed expectations associated with motherhood, professionalism, worker, etc. (Menard Warwick, 2009). Exploring the gendered identities of the women in this study helps to unpack their access to linguistic resources and their use of particular multiliteracies as forms of agency as they invest in Discourse communities to learn English. Agency in this study also includes a response to ideological influences embedded within the historical roots of English as a colonizing language. The English language is a fundamental site of a power struggle in the USA and Ghana. The colonial process in these countries began in English language and involved the displacement of native languages, and the installation of English as a ‘standard’ against other languages within a systematic education and indoctrination (De Fina & King, 2011; Edu-Buandoh, 2016; Phillipson, 1992, 2017; Wolff, 2017). There are several agentic responses to this dominance of English as an imperial language, but two present themselves as agentic and decolonizing practices. These include rejection or subversion practices around the 10 English language. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s (1986) radical refusal to use English in his writings is a good demonstration of the rejection practices around English. According to Ngũgĩ, a restoration of ethnic or national identity such as his Gikuyu identity is embedded in the use of his mother tongue and involves the rejection of the English language including its use in writing and a refusal to submit to the political dominance its use implies (De Fina & King, 2011; Edu-Buandoh, 2016; Phillipson, 1992, 2017; Wolff, 2017). Subversion practices around the English language however involve the use of English with the assumption that English can be used as a resource tool to resist linguistic imperialism or battles. For example, in Ghana and the USA, there is a high incidence of linguistic imperialism with the marginalization of native languages and the negative attitudes that have developed in connection with their use in schools, government, politics, commerce and other domains in the society (Baker, 2011; De Fina & King, 2011; Edu-Buandoh, 2016; Phillipson, 1992, 2017; Wolff, 2017). Linguistic imperialism occurs when one language is privileged over other languages with existing cultural and linguistic inequalities between the privileged language and other languages that come into contact with it. Linguistic imperialism has informed the construction and reconstruction of linguistic identities as people agentively learn dominant languages such as English (Edu-Buandoh, 2016). Kachru (1992) highlights how English was used in a subversive and agentic way in India to provide a neutral ground for communication between contesting local language groups. The rejection and subversion stances around English appeal to the heterogeneous nature of human experiences, identity, agency, and the dynamic interplay of power in language use. In this study, I focused on how adult immigrant women learning English negotiated the power that circulated English literacy. 11 Power is dynamic and embedded in the social practices of each Discourse community and people are subject to or subject of such power based on their identities in given contexts. Thus, entities such as power and identity are never fixed but are constantly in motion (Foucault, 1978). Through the lens of a socio-cultural perspective on language learning (Ballenger, 1999; Heath, 1983) power is a phenomenon that is contextualized by the particular conditions in effect. Thus, power in Discourse communities is “diffused rather than concentrated, embodied and enacted rather than possessed, discursive rather than purely coercive, and constitutes agents rather than being deployed by them” (Gaventa, 2003, p.1). For example, as learners and native speakers of a language interact within a given Discourse community, the relations of power among and between them become fluid at any given moment as they pull from different multiliteracies repertoires and adopt different positions and identities. There is a strategic play of power embedded in social relations so that individuals within a Discourse community both enact and undergo the effects of power (Foucault, 1978). Thus, power runs through discourses within Discourse communities and learners agentively act upon it. Based on this definition of power, I conceptualize learners enacting agency about English literacy in two significant ways in this study. First, learners enact agency through their investment in Discourse communities, whether they are bilingual or monolingual, to learn English. Within these Discourse communities, learners exercise agency by choosing what they perceive as beneficial to their existing or future identities, by consenting to or resisting hegemonic literacy practices through investing or divesting from the language and literacy practices. Secondly, learners use literacy tools that are multiliteracies, 12 allowing them the flexibility to select the appropriate language and modality to use in each Discourse community depending on their audience and their identities. Through the critical sociocultural theory of literacy, I conceptualize English literacy in the life of adult immigrant women as a process of investing (reflected in their performance of agency) in various Discourse communities and enacting multiple identities across these communities through the use of multiliteracies based on the affordances and constraints within these communities. These affordances and constraints include literacy experiences and history, social expectations, institutional and learners' goals and desires, and mediational tools (Gee, 2015). The elements of the critical sociocultural theory in this study will be discussed further in Chapter 2. Significance Traditional conceptualization of literacy as monolingual and print-based within classrooms is not enough to capture the multiliteracies repertoire and diverse identities and agency that populate the English learning experiences of English language learners. Scholarly research found that ESL learners engaged in rich literacy practices that involved multiliteracies and the performance of identities and agency (Norton, 2013; Omerbašić, 2015; Ortmeier-Hopper, 2013; Perry, 2007; Warriner, 2007). This study expands on this research by sharing the common ways in which adult immigrant women engage in English Discourse communities outside the classroom, whether they are learning English in the USA or Ghana. Also, by studying the agentic identity performances of adult immigrant women outside ESL classroom contexts through their literacy practices within Discourse 13 communities, this study illuminates the need for continuing dialogue on ways in which identities of learners intersect with their English language learning. This may offer recommendations for creating heterogeneous and empowering environments for English literacy. A better understanding of the rich, everyday literacy experiences of adult ESL learners will also help provide insights for teachers and policymakers regarding crafting lessons and curricula that will connect classroom literacy experiences to a learner's outside classroom literacy experiences. These students' outside literacy experiences constitute mediational tools that can be used within educational spaces to augment the literacy resources and identities of language learners. Within these spaces, learners can be designers of their literacy learning and engage in authentic English learning contexts that can potentially enhance their literacy experiences. Chapter Summary In this chapter, I provided an overview of this dissertation study and the critical sociocultural theory of literacy that grounds this research. I have illustrated the need to understand better the literacy experiences of adult immigrant women and their investment in English Discourse communities outside ESL classrooms and how they shape or are shaped by these communities as they learn English. This includes their agentic investment in learning English, as well as their enactments of identities in these communities. In the following chapter, I provide an in-depth discussion of the theoretical framework of this study which is the critical sociocultural theory of literacy. I also give an overview of the literature that situates my study within the range of existing research 14 that focuses on women learning English in English speaking countries. Themes, as well as gaps in this research literature, will be discussed. This chapter will also provide insights into the contexts of identity negotiation and agentive processes around English language learning in the USA and Ghana. In Chapter 3, I explain in greater detail the methodology guiding this project, including an overview of the research approach, data generation, analysis processes, and ethical considerations guiding the methodological process. Chapters 4 and 5 provide within- and across-case analysis of the six immigrant women in this study highlighting their English learning experiences in various Discourse communities. While the within-case analysis provides a wealth of contextual richness and person-specific information without which individual English literacy experiences cannot be understood, the across-case analysis highlight divergent and convergent themes that surfaced between the case studies from the USA and Ghana narratives about English learning experiences. Chapter 6 discusses the conclusions, implications, and future directions of this study. CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND LITERATURE REVIEW In this chapter, I provide a review of theoretical frameworks and scholarly literature through a critical sociocultural lens to illustrate the relationship between language, power, identity, and agency in English literacy. I argue that there is a need for a nuanced understanding of English literacy as socially situated, embedded in power relations, and includes enactments of agency. Gee (1996) explains that language is “fully attached to ‘other stuff’: to social relations, cultural models, power and politics, perspectives on experience, value and attitudes as well as things and places in the world” (p.vii). Thus, language learning is a sociopolitical phenomenon and should be explored with attention to the social context as well as the power embedded within such contexts. The critical sociocultural framework that shapes this study highlights the social nature of English literacy. English literacy is embedded in Discourse communities. The power within such communities is evidenced in discourses surrounding English language within Discourse communities. The enactment of multiple identities through investments in Discourse communities using multiliteracies is the agency enactment that results from acting on such power (see Figure 2.1). The literature review will also unpack the experiences of adult immigrant women in ESL programs, which includes their gendered 16 representations, access to linguistic resources, and their agency in language learning. The literature on language and identity in the USA and Ghana will also be reviewed to give a more profound sense of the contexts in which learners agentively invested in Discourse communities to learn English. This chapter is in three sections. In the first section, I provide a discussion of the theoretical framework that shapes this work. Specifically, I give detailed analysis of the elements that make up the critical sociocultural theory of literacy. The second section focuses on the research literature that situates this study. The literature includes research on the representation of adult immigrant women learning English as another language (Frye, 1999; Goldstein, 1997; Skilton-Silvester, 2002) and the influences of gendered identities on language learning (Kouritzin, 2000; Norton, 2000a; Pavlenko & Piller, 2008; Peirce, Harper & Burnaby, 1993; Warriner, 2004). The last section provides insights into the effects of colonialism on people’s linguistic identities, specifically in multilingual societies such as Ghana and the USA. Through a historical account of the impact of linguistic imperialism on Ghana and the USA, I provide a nuanced understanding of the significance of the contexts in which this study is situated. I highlight how the participants’ demographic backgrounds allow for a full appreciation of the forms of agency (which are also instantiations of identity in this study) used by the immigrant women as they learn English in the USA and Ghana. The body of scholarly literature and the critical sociocultural theory of literacy work together to give a deeper meaning to the English literacy experiences of immigrant women learning English in the USA and Ghana. 17 Critical Sociocultural Theory of Literacy Coined by Lewis, Enciso and Moje (2007), a critical sociocultural theory of literacy conceptualizes literacy as inseparable from the social, cultural, and historical context in which it occurs (Wertsch, 1991). Language learning thus takes on a sociopolitical dimension since learners are situated in multiple social, historical, and cultural contexts within the Discourse communities that they engage in to learn English and may resist or accept the identities and positions that these Discourse communities offer them. They may have to wrestle with different literacy tools within their English Discourse communities. Specifically, the English literacy experiences of adult immigrants involve engagements in multiple Discourse communities as well as enactments of contextualized identities and agency. Agency as previously defined is an investment in Discourse communities. It includes the use of multiliteracies repertoires and involves a desire to participate in interactions within Discourse communities, be they bilingual or monolingual. I associate such agency with learners’ enactment of identity as they choose from their multiliteracies repertoire and position themselves as different kinds of people within multiple Discourse communities. To these ends, I present three interconnected frameworks that inform the critical sociocultural theory in this study. These are the frameworks of ‘D/d’ discourse and Discourse communities (Gee, 2012), the notion of investment (Darvin & Norton, 2018; Norton, 2000b), and multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996). First, I discuss the concepts of discourse, Discourse, and Discourse communities to illustrate how learning English, performing agency, and enacting identities are related to each other in light of sociocultural theory. Also, I emphasize that coexistence of learners’ multiliteracies 18 repertoires and desire to invest in a particularly appropriate Discourse community may set forth agency. Finally, I discuss how learners' positioning of themselves within Discourse communities can evolve from passivity to active designers of their learning by suitably combining multiliteracies repertoires, the social context within Discourse communities, and their desired identities. I argue that, when learners have multiliteracies repertoires to draw on as they engage in Discourse communities, they have more control over their agency or their right to select appropriate literacy tools and Discourse communities. This helps them enact their desired identities. To understand how these frameworks interconnect, articulations of the concepts of power, identities, and agency are necessary. I will, therefore, illustrate how these concepts get pulled together within critical sociocultural theory. Discourse/discourse Gee (2012) argues that language use moves beyond grammar and makes a clear distinction between ‘discourse’ and ‘Discourse’ (lower-case ‘d’ and upper-case ‘D’) and Discourse community to provide a deeper understanding of the interrelationship between language learning, social identity, and social contexts. Gee (2012) defines discourse (with a small ‘d’) as stretches of language used to make sense in communications. According to Gee, it is not enough to use discourse alone in meaning-making. Discourse exists as one component within the larger construct of a Discourse. Discourse includes ways of speaking, listening, writing, and reading coupled with distinctive ways of acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, dressing, thinking, believing with other people, and with various objects, tools, and technologies to enact specific socially recognizable identities 19 engaged in specific socially identifiable activities. There are collective identities, beliefs, and ways of thinking, feeling, and being that are recognized as both appropriate and defining of membership to other members within a Discourse. According to Gee, these identities might include being a police officer, a first-grader, a street gang member, a teacher, woman, man, girlfriend, boyfriend, and so forth. For example, Tina, one of the participants in this study, was within a particular Discourse community as a bilingual teacher, an English language learner within another community and, a mother within her family Discourse community. There is diversity in social contexts and multiplicity of identities as we engage with discourses and Discourses. It may be helpful to think of Discourses as subcultures within a broader culture or society. In this sense, a person can belong to many subcultures (Discourses) at the same time. According to Gee (2012), the only way to become a member of a Discourse, and thereby learn the discourse of Discourses, is through apprenticeship into the practices of the particular Discourse communities. Discourse Communities As previously discussed, Discourses are acquired through socialization and apprenticeship into the social practices of a particular Discourse community. Discourse communities are learning spaces in which "groupings of people not only face-to-face or actual in-the-moment groupings, but also ideational groupings across time and space share ways of knowing, thinking, believing, acting, and communicating" (Moje & Lewis, 2007, p. 16). Thus, within each Discourse community that a person belongs to, there are collective identities, beliefs, and ways of thinking, feeling, talking, and being that are 20 recognized as both appropriate and defining of membership. Because of this, members of a Discourse community can accept others as either 'insiders' or outsiders (Gee, 1996). There are many Discourse communities that we belong to in our lives that may be primary or secondary. Primary Discourses are those that we are initially socialized into in our homes. In language learning, our native languages or the languages we are born into become part of our primary Discourse (Gee, 2012). Secondary Discourses are those languages, knowledge, or skills that we gain through consequent participation in various social groups, institutions, and organizations. For example, adult ESL students may belong to the adult ESL Discourse community to share ways of knowing, thinking, believing, and acting associated with English literacy. They may simultaneously belong to the Discourse community of their native language, ESL Discourse community, English Discourse community, and Discourse communities of social institutions such as a church, work, or family. Adult ESL students need to learn or apprentice into multiple discourses or 'Englishes' and many Discourse communities both in and out of schools such as Discourses of academic subject areas and school life, the Discourses of shopping, entertainment, and family life. In this context, the ESL classroom becomes just one of the many vignettes of Discourse communities that ESL students need to participate in as they learn English. Unfortunately, most ESL programs often fail to recognize that there are multiple and overlapping D/discourses that ESL students need to acquire (Warriner, 2007). Several research studies on ESL students have found them engaging in myriad out of school literacy practices that are in stark contrast with the literacies that are encouraged or utilized in traditional classroom spaces (Omerbašić, 2015; Ortmeier-Hooper, 2013; 21 Perry, 2007; Warriner, 2007). Thus, the many identities that learners enact within Discourse communities as they learn English have been veiled. This study serves as a pointer to some of the Discourse communities that adult ESL students engage with outside the ESL classroom, which is their collective identity. These Discourse communities are, however, embedded in different values of knowledge, capital, and mediational tools leading to multiple enactments of identities and agency within Discourse communities. In the next section, I pull together the concepts Discourse communities, multiliteracies and investment to illustrate an interconnected relationship between power, ideological assumptions, and agency in language learning. Identity, Power and Agency The concepts of Discourse/discourse, multiliteracies, and investment illustrate three elements that are important in language learning. These are identity, power and agency. As previously defined, identities are not stable cores or clusters of social images but temporary social positionings, which are constructed moment to moment through language/discourses in social interaction (Weedon, 1987, 2004). Agency is defined as investment in Discourse communities using a multiliteracies repertoire that is based on a desire to participate in interactions within a social context. When learners are willing to participate in a given context, they voluntarily use the language necessary to engage in that context, which includes various sociocultural elements. They learn to know their significant role and their relationship to the circumstances in which they are playing a part. A combination of these actions highlights the performance of identities as well as agency within Discourse as learners invest in Discourse communities to learn English. 22 Discourses Communities and Identities People enact multiple and fluid identities as they become members of different Discourse communities in either face-to-face or through virtual contexts (people dispersed across countries and continents share common interests and ideologies and participate in specific practices through the internet). Such membership in multiple Discourse communities helps in the enactment of multiple identities. These identities are fluid and created by our interactions within the Discourse community. We become actors and play different roles that vary according to the expectations of others and the social practices within Discourse communities we invest in to learn. Our actions, values, and thoughts within Discourse communities can lead to a compromise in certain contexts or create conflict in others as we enact agency. We enact identities in relationships with those around us. We can do this conversely by distinguishing ourselves against those who are outside of our identity. Gee (2012) highlighted the case of a Chicana student who was socialized to be cooperative rather than competitive and be respectful to people in authority. This student had difficulties engaging in antagonistic debates with law professors. Gee explained that there could be differences in societal values across Discourse communities that could affect our forms of identity and agency. Gee explained, “some families and social groups highly value cooperation, not competition so that for some, being inducted into law school social practices means learning behaviors at odds with their other social practices that are constitutive of their other social identities” (p. 135). Gee's excerpt gives meaning to the situation of the law student, which involved a contradiction in her sense of identity, based on her membership in her family Discourse community which valued co-operation instead of competition. To be successful, this law 23 student needed to reposition herself to the linguistic conventions of law school, thereby enabling her to enact multiple identities. In Gee’s definition of Discourse communities, he indicated that within Discourse communities, members “use various objects, tools and technologies to enact specific socially recognizable identities and engage in specific socially recognizable activities” (Gee, 2012, p.152). The multiliteracies repertoire concept in this study operationalizes and augments how learners use such tools to enact socially recognizable identities within Discourse communities. Multiliteracies Theory Multiliteracies create spaces for the enactment of identities in daily English learning practice. It includes the use of a variety of literacy tools and text forms brought about through cultural and language diversity, information, and multimedia technologies (Knobel & Lankshear, 2007; New London Group, 1996). Learners use literacy tools that are multiliteracies allowing them the flexibility to select the appropriate language and modality to use in each Discourse community depending on their audience and their identities. Thus, literacy tools include both language and multiple modes and are multiliteracies that learners use to achieve their goals, develop their knowledge, and participate fully in their selected Discourse communities. According to the New London Group (1996), the real-world contexts in which literacy is practiced involve a mixture of languages, visuals, audios, gestural and tactile representations, emails, and text messages (Kalantzis & Cope, 2000; New London Group, 1996). For example, an adult ESL student may be able to learn English through a dictionary, a movie on television or the internet. 24 In turn, an English language learner may shape these tools or exploit them for his or her purposes. These may include creating texts and images through the use of technology such as computers and digital spaces such as Facebook for meaning-making. Nimmon and Begoray (2008) examined the use of multiliteracies in adult ESL and found that adult immigrant women could communicate their thoughts and ideas through multiliteracies such as Photonovels. Photonovels are like comic books but contain photographs instead of drawings. In the making of Photonovels, the adult immigrant women made costumes, which they wore to enact conversations or dialogue with peers. Pictures of them in conversation with others were taken. The women then wrote out their conversations in short sentences using familiar words. These pictures and conversations were then assembled through the use of digital media. The adult immigrant women transferred the pictures unto computers and then added the dialogue using speech balloons. The end product was a printed picture novel on health. This process according to Nimmon and Begoray (2008), enhanced the multiliteracies skills of women. This project also increased the women’s confidence and raised their critical consciousness as they became aware of how to be of good health through their Photonovels project (Nimmon & Begoray, 2008). Through their project study, the authors unveiled how multiliteracies could be beneficial to adult ESL learners under supervised or classroom situations. My research looks at the use of multiliteracies by adult ESL outside ESL classrooms. Specifically, I look at how they select their multiliteracies repertoire, whom they use it with, and why they use such tools across different Discourse communities. Multiliteracies afford learners within Discourse communities the flexible tools to position themselves within their desired identities. They shift from speaking their native 25 languages to speaking English across contexts. Learners choose to speak the language that allowed them to do more in their given situations. For example, in an ethnographic study, Kim (2019) explored how married migrant women’s identities related to learning Korean as a second language. Results from this study indicated that the Korean language served as a pipeline for them to earn their desired identities and also exercise agency in their new environment. Also, Norton (2000a), through a qualitative study of immigrant women learning English in Canada, argued that immigrant language learners’ choice to invest in particular identities (e.g., motherhood) and in the English language enabled them to transform power relations within spaces where they learned English. Thus, as these women positioned themselves as English language speakers, they were not only enacting their desired identities but also performing agency. As theorized by Norton (2000b) and Darvin and Norton (2015), the concept of investment seeks to make a meaningful connection between a learner's desire and commitment to learning a language and his/her identity on the other. In the following paragraphs, I discuss how the theory of investment has been used in this study to unpack the enactment of identities and agency within the Discourse communities that learners choose to learn English. A Personal Theory of Investment Norton’s investment metaphor builds on French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of capital, an essential analytical tool for research on linguistic and literate practices in society (Gal, 1989). In Bourdieu’s (1991) work, societally valued language varieties are linguistic capitals that give them access to resources in their communities. 26 These linguistics capitals are evidenced in the monolingual standardized speech and language of the dominant social groups. People's interactions with varieties of languages tend to reflect societal positions and identities (Gal, 1989; Pavlenko & Piller, 2008). Language learning becomes commodified power stricken when access to a higher status correlates with the acquisition of a prestigious language like English. Menard-Warwick (2006), for example, argued that immigrant women like Martina in Norton's (2000a) study could 'claim the right to speak' not because they wanted to learn English but because they wanted to shift from their lower positioning into a higher one. Martina was able to "set up a counter-discourse … by resisting the subject position immigrant woman in favor of the subject position mother" (Norton, 2000a, p. 127). Herein lies an example of a gendered identity, which is also a form of agency in this context. Darvin and Norton (2015, 2018) have expanded the construct of investment to capture the current changing global context. Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model of investment highlights the intersection of identity, capital, and ideology, to provide a multilayered and multidirectional approach that demonstrates how power circulates in society, at both micro- and macrolevels, to include and exclude people through and beyond language. Darvin and Norton (2015) refer to ideologies as “dominant ways of thinking that organize and stabilize societies while simultaneously determining modes of inclusion and exclusion” (p. 72). It is a pluralized formulation because ideologies are constructed by different structures of power and reproduced by both institutional conditions and recursive hegemonic practices. In an age of mobility, learners can move fluidly across spaces where ideologies collide and compete, shaping their identities and positioning them in different ways. Such a conception complements the view of identity 27 as multiple and fluid. In the same way, this model recognizes that the value of one's economic, cultural, or social capital shifts across time and space. By framing investment through the constructs of identity, capital, and ideology, Darvin and Norton (2015) spotlight how microstructures of power surround adult ESL students in the process of acquiring English literacy. Discourses around learning English are indexical of larger neoliberal and hegemonic ideological influences of English. The expanded model of the framework of investment may help researchers investigate the degree to which ESL students consent to or dissent from the pressures of neoliberal ideology on language education and how this shapes learners' investments and practices within English Discourse communities. My study fuses Norton's earlier and later concept of investment with a critical look at how the English Discourse communities they engage with, shape their investment in learning English. I define investment as a form of agency. Agency is an investment in Discourse communities using multiliteracies repertoires and based on a desire to participate in interactions within Discourse communities, whether they are bilingual or monolingual. I also associate such agency with learners’ enactment of identity as they choose from their multiliteracies repertoire and position themselves as different kinds of people within multiple Discourse communities. Here, identities are recognized as part of the power dynamic in language learning. Thus, a learner may be highly motivated to learn a language, for example, but may resist opportunities to speak that language when conditions associated with speaking that language are not favorable for the learner. Adult ESL learners can invest in a target language based on the dynamic negotiation of power in the Discourse community of the 28 target language. Thus, investment in language keeps changing through space and time (Norton, 2013; Peirce, 1995). My theory brings to bear the tools that mediate learners’ actions within Discourse communities as they perform agency and enact their multiple identities. Multiliteracies repertoires help learner’s appropriate language to their desires and identities (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009). Darvin and Norton (2015) argued that people invest in a language because they recognize how it will help them acquire a broader range of symbolic and material resources, which will, in turn, increase the value of their cultural capital and social power. McKay and Wong (1996) used Peirce’s (1995) notion of investment and discussed the relationship between agency and language development of four adolescent Chinese immigrants in a California high school. They found that the students' previous histories, family background, and discourses of power surrounding them at school contributed to creating different types of agency and learning experiences for the four participants. For example, one of the students derived agency from being positioned as an athlete and a popular friend (to Chinese and non-Chinese fellow students) and did not feel the need to develop his academic skills. Another participant, however, exercised agency by positioning himself and being positioned by his teachers, parents, and other Chinese students as a model student in school. This identity allowed him to have acceptance and respect among his Chinese peers at school. Here, there is an intersection of power, identity and agency as these students learned English. This section has provided an in-depth discussion of the critical sociocultural theory of literacy that situates this study. This theory is framed on sociocultural perspectives of literacy as socially situated and a critical perspective of literacy as 29 embedded in enactments of power and agency in the form of investments in Discourse communities and the performance of identities through the use of multiliteracies as mediational tools in multiple Discourse communities. Gee's theory of D/discourse provides a useful tool in this study to describe the social nature of literacy acquisition. Gee's (2012) theory of Discourse community has been used in this study to explain that learner's language (discourse) is socially situated and depends on membership in multiple Discourse communities. These Discourse communities are, however, embedded in different values of knowledge, capital, and mediational tools leading to various and multiple enactments of identities and agency within Discourse communities. While multiliteracies help unpack the tools that learners agentively use within Discourse communities, Norton's investment helps map out the micro- and macrostructures of power that circulate within English Discourse communities and how people respond to such power. Sociocultural perspectives on literacy and critical perspectives on literacy dovetail in this study to frame the English learning experience of adult ESL learners as shaped by investments in multiple Discourse communities with the use of multiliteracies as mediational tools and enactment of multiple identities and multiple forms of agency. Through the critical sociocultural theory in this study, I argue that agency, power, and identity in language learning need to be analyzed simultaneously along a continuum of context–tools and ideological constructs of the learner. While ESL learners’ enactment of agency is primarily highlighted in the research literature that focuses on social interactions, my research, by adding the multiliteracies repertoire, raises a range of valuable insights that have a bearing upon our understandings of agency as multilayered that require a broader approach. 30 In the following section, I will provide a discussion of the literature that situates this study to unpack the experiences of immigrant women learning English thoroughly. I look at how identity, agency, and power have been utilized in research on immigrant women learning English. This discussion includes research on the representation of adult immigrant women learning English as another language (Frye, 1999; Goldstein, 1997; Skilton-Silvester, 2002), as well as the influences of gender on language learning (Kouritzin, 2000; Norton, 2000a; Pavlenko & Piller, 2008; Pierce, Harper & Burnaby, 1993; Warriner, 2004). The last section will provide insights into the effects of colonialism on the linguistic identities of people, specifically in multilingual societies such as Ghana and the USA. Through a historical account of the impact of linguistic imperialism on Ghana and the USA, I provide my readers with a nuanced understanding of the contexts in which this study is situated and how that allows for a full appreciation of the forms of agency (which are also instantiations of identity in this study) used by the immigrant women as they invested in Discourse communities to learn English in the USA and Ghana. Experiences of Immigrant Women Learning English As previously indicated, this section will focus on the literature that situates this study. This literature will include a mosaic presentation of how the experiences of adult immigrant women learning English as another language have been taken up concerning their representation, gender, and language learning, and neoliberal and hegemonic ideological influences on language learning. First, I present an overview of how adult immigrant women learning English in English-speaking countries have been represented. 31 I highlight the dual representation of adult ESL students in deficit-oriented and ambivalent representations with emphasis on how counter-stories or narratives have been used to discuss adult immigrant women's literacy experiences in adult ESL. These narratives are centered on funds of knowledge and pay particular attention to the experiences and voices of adult immigrant women. Through the lens of feminist thought in gender and language studies, I examine how gender as a system of social relations and discursive practices affects an individual’s access to linguistic resources and possibilities of language investment and acquisition. I will end this section with a spotlight on ideological discourses on language with a focus on how English as a marker of colonialism fosters linguistic imperialism and impacts the construction of linguistic identities in the USA and Ghana. Representations of Adult Immigrant Women in Adult ESL Numerous studies on immigrant women learning English in English-speaking countries highlight women as less privileged regarding learning a target language. The English learning experiences of women are portrayed as profoundly crippled by negative gatekeeping practices that restrict their mobility and access to majority language education (Baynham & Simpson, 2010; Frye, 1999; Goldstein, 1995; Miller, 2009; Skilton-Silvester, 2002). Also, the literacy experiences of adult immigrant women enrolled in adult ESL classes are often drenched in deficit ideological discourses that portray them as weak, abused, and confined to the domestic sphere. They have little opportunity to communicate with members of the society (Pavlenko et al., 2001). Cumming and Gill (1992), in a study of immigrant women learning English in Canada, 32 reported that many of the women they studied prioritized taking care of their family over attending ESL classes. The ESL classes were considered a luxury and were often reserved for leisure times. Adult immigrant women could only participate in learning English after domestic commitments were met. On the contrary, their husbands were found to be competent English speakers and had significant interactions with the community. Rockhill (1983) reiterates a similar situation. In their attempt to acquire English literacy, adult immigrant women often got caught up in power dynamics between men and women. These women became a threat to the gendered cultural practices in a Latino immigrant community. Tran and Nguyen (1994), in a study with Southeast Asian refugee women, echoed Rockhill's as well as Cumming and Gill's findings that adult immigrant women are oppressed and had restricted access to language learning. Even though these findings depict the real-life experiences of women in adult ESL classrooms, interpretations of these findings may differ if framed in an agentic way. These women may be performing agency by choosing to be with their families instead of attending ESL classes. The family may have cultural capital that they value more than the ESL class. The framework of investment could help explore the reason behind individual choices and commitments that adult ESL students make as they learn English. Skilton-Sylvester (2002), for example, unpacked a mismatch between choices that teachers perceived as useful to their students in the ESL classroom, and what the students needed. Skilton-Sylvester (2002) unmasked deficit stories from interviews with teachers in ESL programs. For example, one teacher excluded materials related to employment in his class, assuming that the adult immigrant women were not interested in employment. However, students later articulated that they were interested in getting jobs. This teacher 33 then realized he had misperceived his students’ interests. Skilton-Silvester (2002) also argued that the director of the program, through their narratives, positioned the learners into identities of "welfare recipients" who were unwilling to find work. While these studies expose the deficit ideological underpinnings that impact adult women learning English in the classroom, they also open up new ways of thinking about how learning within ESL classrooms could be reconfigured to the real needs of learners. These programs should reflect the sociocultural histories of learners. Frye (1999) studied immigrant women learning English in a local Latino community in the U.S.A. Not only did Frye represent adult immigrant women as needy but she also engaged in stereotyped representations of them in her class. Using a participatory method that fostered the co-construction of knowledge based on the perceived literacy needs of immigrant women, Frye (1999) built a classroom environment that promoted the sharing of life journeys. For example, Frye (1999) used pictures from magazines that gave a myopic view of all Hispanic women as from low socio-economic backgrounds in an attempt to depict families from different cultural and social contexts. I quote: I often promoted discussion of differences in such areas as social class, religious background, and sexual orientation. One such discussion culminated in comparisons of photographs from magazines depicting women and families in different cultural and class settings. Women who were Hispanic and Black (the backgrounds of the women in the class) in the pictures I chose were shown in low-income, sometimes impoverished settings, whereas White women appeared in dazzling, luxurious backgrounds. In small groups, the students talked about the differences between the pictures and how they felt about them. A discussion of wealth, poverty, class, and privilege ensued. The women expressed envy, dislike, and distrust of the White women in the pictures and a sense that they could never attain what those women had. They expressed sympathy and empathy for the women of color. (p. 507) First, Frye's choice of material in this class runs contrary to the principles of participatory 34 research, which foregrounds a co-constructed approach to teaching and learning. The learning materials could have been chosen by the students and not the teacher. Also, this class activity positioned all women of color as poor, underprivileged with no sense of agency, and culminated a feeling of self-hate and disappointment. In this context, the women were blamed for their less privileged position with no reference to how society played a role in their experiences. Most of this literature did not consider the social context of literacy. Also, I find the women’s voices not fully highlighted even though narrative methods were employed in these studies. I agree to some extent that some women go through problems in their literacy experiences and will not trivialize their experiences. However, these research bodies did not give the historical and social backgrounds of the women to fully engage with different contexts in which they were experiencing discrimination. The women may interpret what the researchers saw as a restriction to be their forms of agency. Spivak (1994) argues that in most contexts of representation, "The subaltern as a female cannot be heard or read" (p. 104). Thus, minority female voices are often marginalized and overpowered in research. This statement has, however, been controversial regarding how some scholars are interpreting it. For example, Loomba (2015) is against the literal interpretation of this statement that subaltern women cannot speak. I will argue that subaltern women can indeed talk, but unfortunately, their voices are filtered through grand narratives that tend to turn their screams into whispers. Thus, agency is hardly depicted in adult immigrant women’s literacy experiences. Their position as women and their low economic status affect their participation and engagement with English literacy. In order not to silence the voices of women in this study, I employ a critical sociocultural perspective of literacy, which 35 equips me with tools to engage in a nuanced discussion of the literacy experiences of adult immigrant women with attention to the negotiation of power, agency, and identity. My methodological framework of narrative analysis includes the co-construction of data transcription and interpretation with participants to ensure that I attend to their voices and narratives. Countering Deficit Discourses Using Immigrant Women’s Funds of Knowledge A funds of knowledge approach to adult learning and teaching of English employs a culturally relevant process to enhance the work and life trajectories of learners. It disrupts deficit perspectives that envision learners as lacking in culture and language (Larrotta & Serrano, 2011). The funds of knowledge of a community are not a laundry list of immutable cultural traits. They are historically grounded and embedded in unequal power relations (Wolf, 1966). The funds of knowledge of a community are historical and occupy that space between structure and agency. Wolf (1966) makes the concept of funds of knowledge even more evident. Wolf (1966) distinguishes several funds that households must juggle: caloric funds, funds of rent, replacement funds, ceremonial funds, social funds. These sets of activities require strategic agentic ways to sustain a family. Larrotta and Serrano (2011) argue that adult learners bring a wealth of such funds, information, and experience into the ESL classroom that they can use to make sense of the new knowledge and skills they are trying to acquire. Larrotta and Serrano (2011) provide a typical example of this through a study on the use of the funds of knowledge of parents in an English class. Using the funds of knowledge of parents, 36 Larrotta and Serrano (2011) collaborated and constructed knowledge with students through class projects, such as a personal glossary and storybooks. Students created a bank of vocabulary using words they needed or used in real life. Unlike the study of Frye (1999) which prescribed what learners had to use in their journals, students in Larrotta and Serrano (2011) created stories that were centered on their life experiences. All learners were involved in language learning activities in different spaces of their daily lives, such as work, home, and community. Creating a storybook gave the students opportunities to practice their writing skills and communicate meaning about their neighborhoods, families, pets, and children. It also incorporated students’ funds of knowledge to promote their language development. This study’s findings highlight the need to investigate, identify, and use adult learner's funds of knowledge for useful English instruction. In my study, I attended to how adult ESL women negotiated knowledge through Gee’s concept of Discourses, discourse, and Discourse communities. I used Norton’s concept of investment to tap into the cultural capital that learners deemed as worthwhile to acquire. By attending to the multiple funds of knowledge of their students, Larrotta and Serrano (2011) unpacked the various identities that students performed in multiple contexts or Discourses of the real-life experiences of the student. This study brought the real-life experiences of adult ESL students into the classroom setting. Menard-Warwick (2006), through a study on family literacy classes, found that when there is a congruence between family practices and classroom literacy practices, adult learners are encouraged to learn. For example, teaching adult learners to read storybooks to their children has been an essential component of many family literacy 37 classes (Menard-Warwick, 2006). Storybook reading, in both Spanish and English, was widespread among immigrant parents. For example, Trini and Laura, both mothers and learners at the family literacy center, adopted the cultural practice of storybook reading during adolescence. They continued to read to their children in adulthood. Trini continued buying and reading magazines, a practice that led directly into buying board books for her son when he was an infant. Both began telling their children stories about Mexico when they were small. Laura was introduced to the local public library by a teenage niece. Laura started reading to her daughter in English and Spanish as a result of this introduction to the library resources. Laura states, I began to go to the library, and now I liked to take out books to begin to read to her, but I read them in Spanish.…And then I saw books that were kind of easy to read in English, and now I began…to take out books to read to her in both languages, to try to read something to her in English. In the above excerpt, Trini was making use of her bilingualism to practice her English and maintain Spanish in her family. Trini also began reading to her children with the help of her nieces. While Trini read to her children only in Spanish, she drafted her sixthgrade niece to read the books she bought in English. She said she also continued to tell her children stories in Spanish about her hometown, and especially about the wild animals that lived on the hill there. Mainly because storybook reading was already an established practice in their families, these adult learners welcomed the chance to spend class time in this way. They shared what they learned from the class with their children. Findings from this research depict that the ESL classroom literacy activities in which Trini and Laura participated were corresponding in many ways with their funds of knowledge. It was this sense of congruence that afforded them access to new practices and genres. Storybook reading, familiar to them in Spanish, allowed them to develop 38 literacy in English. Through Storybook reading, they gained an understanding of their children’s schoolwork. For Trini and Laura, storytelling and reading were part of their lived experiences and gave them individual strength to negotiate the English language outside the English language literacy classroom. This finding sits parallel with the argument in the concept of investment that learners invest in what they deem beneficial to them. In this study, reading becomes a beneficial tool for the learner’s identity as mothers. Findings from my research also highlighted how motherhood and being bilingual opened up access to Discourse communities that were bilingual and used English literacy. The participants’ bilingual identities were also depicted through their choice of tools and language within bilingual Discourse communities. Even though Larrotta and Serrano (2011) and Menard -Warwick (2006) brought out the voices of the adult immigrant women and represented them as resourceful and capable of learning English outside the classroom context, there is a not a deep enough portrayal of the women’s use of agency. Literacy in this context was depicted as neutral, making the power relations embedded in language learning blurry. There is agency in language learning, and one lens that helps us to look deeper and more clearly into the agentic enactments of women learning English is feminist thought in the field of gender and language. Language Learning and Gender Many researchers over the past years have theorized the role of language in the production of gender relations in second language acquisition (Kim, 2019; MenardWarwick, 2009; Park, 2017; Skilton-Sylvester, 2002). Through the lens of feminist 39 thought in gender and language studies, gender is conceptualized as a product of social doings, "a system of culturally constructed relations of power, produced and reproduced in the interaction between and among men and women" (Gal, 1991, p. 176). Language is seen as the locus of such culturally and socially contested relations. In this section, I discuss ways in which gender has been used to frame language learning, focusing on the gendered representation of language learning, gendered access to linguistic resources, and gendered agency in language learning. Gendered Representations of Language Learning Notions of difference, dominance, and deficit were the themes that populated early research on language and gender (Pavlenko & Piller, 2008). Lakoff (1975) and Thorne and Henley (1975) theorized a dominance framework of language and gender in which women were highlighted as linguistically oppressed and lagging behind men in language learning (Pavlenko & Piller, 2008). Through the lens of difference, Maltz and Borker (1982) and Tannen (1990) theorized that women and men were different when it came to language learning. They used different styles of language or genderlects that were sex-exclusive. This language use was as a result of their socialization in samegender peer groups. In the deficit framework of language learning, women were depicted as linguistically inferior to men since they often used inferior languages and communicated less than men (Pavlenko & Piller, 2008; Stevens, 1986). Through the lens of dominance, deficit, and difference, the labels of men and women were portrayed as a uniform natural category with members having collective and consistent characteristics or traits. Research 40 on language and gender took a feminist perspective turn in early 1990. It criticized earlier studies that essentialized and homogenized the language learning experiences of men and women. Research in gender and language has begun to focus on the role of context and power relations that influenced gendered behaviors and performances around language education (Pavlenko & Piller, 2008; Stevens, 1986). Gender in this context was theorized as discursive and involved practices around power, agency, and identities. These practices are at the center of my current research. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003) argue that gender should be seen not so much as something that people have, but rather as something that people do: “Gender doesn’t just exist but is continually produced, reproduced, and indeed changed, through people’s performance of gendered acts” (p. 4). In this sense, ‘having’ a (gendered) identity is, at one point, acting out a specific role or identity and could change according to space and time. Gendered identity has been previously defined as identities inflected by gender (Menard-Warwick, 2009). This identity includes prescribed expectations associated with motherhood, professionalism, worker, etc. Research has addressed how second language learning is interconnected with the language learner’s gendered identities. Menard-Warwick (2009), in a qualitative study of an adult ESL family literacy program, found that immigrant women’s narratives about their second language learning highlighted their gendered identities as critical in their English language learning trajectories. Skilton-Sylvester (2002) researched four Cambodian women's English learning experiences in an ESL classroom in the USA. Findings from this research indicated that women’s participation in the ESL classroom was associated with their gender identity at home. Their roles as wives or mothers had an impact on their 41 commitment to learning English. Skilton-Sylvester’s (2002) study also showed that the women’s choice to continue attending ESL classes depended on the usefulness of the classes in their daily lives. Park (2017) investigated how married migrant women from Southeast Asian countries resisted and negotiated their identities in the context of marginalization that derived from their linguistic and cultural backgrounds and their purpose of migration, their class, gender, and race. Kim (2019) explored how the identities of immigrant women married to Korean men in South Korea interacted with the commitment to learn Korean as a second language. The findings from this study demonstrated that the immigrant women’s second language learning identities are deeply interwoven with their gender identity as mothers responsible for bringing up their children to be good citizens in their host countries. My study explored how the identities of women, both married and unmarried, interconnect with their investment in Discourse communities to learn English. Gendered Access to Linguistic Resources Research by Goldstein (1995, 2001), Kouritzin (2000), Norton (2000a), Pierce, Harper, and Burnaby (1993) and Warriner (2004) shows how gendered practices influence access to language learning. These practices were steeped in traditional patriarchal ideologies of women's roles, and restricted women's access to ESL classes and resources. For example, some women were prevented from accessing ESL classrooms that included men to maintain the cultural values of womanhood (Goldstein, 1995). Some men also prevented their wives from attending ESL classes because they did not want them to be more educated. These men did not value education as an attribute or one of the 42 expectations of womanhood (Norton, 2000a; Tran & Nguyen, 1994). In Rockhill’s (1983) studies of immigrant families, she found that men had more opportunities to speak English, while women did most of the English language literacy work of the household. Similarly, in a study of Portuguese factory workers in Canada, Goldstein (1997) found that gender practices worked against most women learning English while facilitating English learning for men. This finding was based on Portuguese men as factory workers who had more opportunities for speaking English with native speakers of English than women who worked in spaces where they had to speak Portuguese. Gendered work expectations restricted women from having access to learn English. The research studies discussed above point to how gendered identities and positioning influence learner's second language acquisition. The women in these studies had to undergo various obstacles in their English language learning trajectories based on their identities as women, mothers, and wives. In this study, I focus on the women's response to such obstacles or how they agentively navigated gatekeeping practices to language learning as they engaged in Discourse communities to learn English. Gendered Agency in Language Learning Gender ideologies and practices shape learners’ desires, investments, and actions about what languages they choose to learn and speak. As previously defined, ideologies are “dominant ways of thinking that organize and stabilize societies while simultaneously determining modes of inclusion and exclusion” (Darvin & Norton, 2015 p. 72). Ideologies are plural and contextual and may be evidenced in hegemonic practices. 43 Gordon (2004) found Lao women in Philadelphia negotiating complex English as part of their agency for social justice in their families. They used English as they interacted with schools and advocated for their children in the juvenile system. Through English, they were empowered to fight for themselves and their families. Park (2017) researched the English learning experiences of married migrant women from Southeast Asian countries. The findings from this research indicated that these women performed acts of agency as they repositioned themselves from a marginalized linguistic and cultural position to privileged positions as wives and mothers. Also, Kouritzin (2000), Pavlenko (2005), and Warriner (2004) in their studies of adult immigrant women learning English showed similar themes of agency as these women used their linguistic and cultural awareness to navigate their daily challenges in their host countries. Research on language and gender-focus has also focused on agency concerning language use (Gal, 1978; McDonald 1994). There have been instances of language shift initiated by women or men based on their agency through their preference for prestigious languages. Women may learn a second language to obtain a prestigious and higher status (Gal, 1978; McDonald 1994). In a study of the language learning experiences of the bilingual Austrian-Hungarian peasant community of Berwart, Gal (1978) found that women initiated language shift, which involved a change from Hungarian to the German language. This change was their attempt to reposition themselves from their subservient and peasant lives into privileged and higher status positions afforded by the German language. These women also initiated language shift through their decision not to transmit the community's primary language to their children. McDonald (1994) documented how Provencal and Breton mothers in the 1960s and 70s socialized their 44 children in French instead of the local Provencial and Breton languages. These women perceived French as the language of "modernity, urbanity and refinement and higher status, while Provence and Breton smelled of cow shit" (McDonald, 1994, p. 103). Similarly, women in Constantinidou’s (1994) study promoted the death of the East Sutherland Gaelic language by parents refusing to transmit it to their children. This language, according to the women, symbolized their miserable dilapidated fishing community life. In other research on language learning, both men and women shifted their allegiance with a specific language. Fortune (1998) documented how a Karajan-speaking Brazilian boy was socialized by the parents to use specific morphological and lexical forms that were sex exclusive. When he was growing up, the young man's parents did not correct the use of women's forms in his speech. As a result, his linguistic behavior was considered inappropriate by the wider Karajan community, and he was ridiculed as a misfit. He, however, positioned himself in a prestigious status through the Portuguese language. Being bilingual was a liberating experience for him because it provided him with a new and much more acceptable linguistic identity. In a study of language use among the Thonga in South Africa, Herbert (1992) documented that men learned the Zulu language to position themselves as powerful and in higher economic status. This change in language was critical to the men since Zulu speaking women were privileged and perceived as influential in society. The above-discussed literature on gender and language learning shows that the nature of gendered social and economic relations and ideologies about language through space and time mediates language learning. The social contexts of literacy acquisition 45 become a vital platform for research into adult immigrant women's literacy experiences. This understanding connects to Loomba's (2015) argument that we need to consider the historical location and have possibilities for flexible understandings of agency. Sociocultural perspectives of literacy become a vital tool in research on ESL and language acquisition. A more in-depth look into the historical locations of learners as well as the ideologies and discourses surrounding the language they engage with within their Discourse communities becomes necessary. Specifically, it is essential to examine the USA and Ghana's social contexts to understand better how adult immigrant women enact agency as they learn English in the USA and Ghana. Learning English in Ghana and the USA Loomba’s (2015) argument that we need to consider the historical contexts to better understand agency is pivotal in this section as I provide a discussion on the ideological discourse on language in postcolonial communities and how such ideologies impact language identity and language choice in Ghana and USA. English in Ghana During precolonial days (1529-1925), Ghana had formal multilingual education, which began with the castle schools and was later continued by the Christian missionaries (Owu-Ewie, 2006). Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, and English were used as media of instruction in these schools wherever and whenever the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Danes and the English, respectively, were in power. The situation, however, changed with the arrival of the missionaries, who resorted to the use of the local Ghanaian languages in 46 both their educational and evangelizing efforts (Owu-Ewie, 2006). The Basel and Bremen missionaries were successful in the use of a Ghanaian language in their missionary activities during the period from 1529 to 1925 (Owu-Ewie, 2006). They had successfully used the Ghanaian language to the extent that when the British colonial government took over the administration of education in the country in 1925, it could not immediately reverse the trend of using the local language as a medium of instruction in education (Owu-Ewie, 2006). Colonial school in Ghana started with the coming of the Europeans unto the shores of the then Gold Coast in the 1850s. This school’s aim was to create an elitist Ghanaian group that could serve the purposes of the colonial masters (trading, communicating with the locals to propagate colonial agenda, etc.). The English language was the tool that was used to sift the elite from ordinary Ghanaians. Willinsky (1998) described the English language as the tool used to regulate access to authority and knowledge during colonial times. English was thereby the language for education in Ghana, thus rendering over 80 indigenous languages less prestigious (Edu-Buandoh, 2008, 2012). This phenomenon of language use in Ghana depicts linguistic imperialism. Linguistic Imperialism in Ghana Linguistic imperialism is defined by Phillipson (1992) as a hegemonic transfer of language and culture of a dominant group onto another group. It is part of a neoliberal demonstration of power and maintains cultural and linguistic inequalities across the globe. Through the years, English has spread and become deeply seated as the language of development, education to mention but a few. This position has been made possible through the neoliberal ideologies on the intrinsic and extrinsic values of English as 47 compared to other languages. Phillipson (1992) further explained that English has been highlighted as having inherent benefits and is listed as rich, noble, and more prestigious than other languages. The extrinsic values of English lie in its global projection as a welldeveloped language conducive for learning. According to Phillipson (1992), these arguments in favor of English are geared toward linguistic imperialism and do not support the development of other languages, usually indigenous languages in the former colonies. Phillipson (2014) blamed Britain, USA, and other world agencies such as the USAID for promoting English as the lingua Franca of the world. Phillipson (1992, 2014) pointed to how textbooks in English were also hegemonic tools that were culturally irrelevant to most students across the globe. For example, in Ghana, textbooks and curricula used in schools were not culturally responsive and were hegemonic and neoliberal tools for the dominant English societies (Opoku-Amankwa, Edu-Buandoh, & Brew-Hammond, 2014). The Ghanaian language policy negated the status of indigenous languages as it positioned English as the language of education. Sometimes students were punished for speaking Ghanaian languages in schools (EduBuandoh & Otchere, 2012). The inscriptions 'Speak English" dominated the walls of most schools in Ghana. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o led a crusade in 1986 about the domination of English and argued for a process of decolonization that dethroned English in African countries. He proposed the use of local African languages as a restoration of culture since, in his perspective, culture and identity were the histories of people. He argued that "language as culture is the collective memory bank of a people's experience in history" (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, 1986, p. 15). In this excerpt, Ngũgĩ correlated the loss of indigenous languages to the loss of culture and history of the people. Ghanaians, through the 48 hegemonic language policies, are losing their indigenous languages and culture over time. Although other researchers support Phillipson's (1992) theory of linguistic imperialism, Widdowson (1994, 1998) contends that language by itself cannot exert control over people. Rather it is the choices that people make concerning language that control them. Widdowson (1994, 1998) argues that former British colonies had the choice to use their local languages as the mediums of communication and education after the argument is supported by others who maintain that people of the former colonies were not forced to make English their lingua Franca. Brock Utne (2000) supported this argument through the assertion that the former colonies choose English as their language themselves. Widdowson and Brooke Utne's arguments hold little water when the sociopolitical reality of language learning is critically considered. The prestige of the English language continues to offer economic and social capital to former colonies, and their choice of English is agentic in itself (Anchimbe, 2007; Edu-Buandoh, 2008). The situation of language learning and use in Ghana makes an interesting reference, and the next section will examine the literature to project the linguistic identities that are constructed and represented in the use of English in Ghana. Linguistic Identity in Ghana Ghanaians, as previously discussed, consider English as an integral part of literacy and construct their linguistic identities around their ability to speak or not speak English. The representation of 'English speaker' was prestigious and well sought after. According to Hall (1997), representation is the use of language and symbols to make 49 meaning and connects culture to meaning-making. Representation is, therefore, a concept closely related to identity construction. Individuals construct their identities and are reconstructed through interactions and relations with others. People develop their understanding of who they think they are in close relationship to their Discourse communities. If the Discourse community is represented positively, members see themselves positively as made by the group. On the other hand, if it is represented negatively, members keep low esteem of themselves (Abrams & Hogg, 1990). Representations of Ghanaians who do not speak English are, in a way, different from those of Ghanaians who speak English. The representations of people as 'illiterate' or 'local' depends on their ability to speak English. The term 'local' in the Ghanaian context connotates a primitive and backward identity; the identity of an uneducated and unrefined persona who is unfit for well-paid upper-class jobs such as clerical and office related jobs (Edu-Buandoh, 2008; Owusu Ansah & Torto, 2013; Owu-Ewie, 2006). The 'literates' were, however, the educated elite who could speak English and had well-paid jobs and upper-class positions in the society. Ghanaians who could read and write in English were considered as a positive and influential group who took charge of governance and all other key sectors of the economy. The people in government, such as parliamentarians, could read and write in English and often excluded the use of Ghanaian languages in Parliament even though the 1992 Constitution of Ghana specified that some Ghanaian languages could be allowed. Edu-Buandoh (2008) referred to the comments of Professor Yankah, a Ghanaian linguist and researcher in the March 2014 edition of the Graphic Online to highlight how people who could read and write in the Ghanaian language were considered illiterates and excluded from governmental duties. Prof. 50 Yankah argued that English had been the medium of communication in Parliament since the colonial era in Ghana. Edu-Buandoh (2008) therefore argued that the construct of literate or educated Ghanaians mimicked the characteristics of the colonial rulers because they were considered as powerful and controlled the affairs of the government. The locals who cannot speak English but express themselves in multiple Ghanaian languages are considered less powerful and of low socioeconomic status because they lack the linguistic capital to earn high wages (Edu-Buandoh, 2008; Owusu Ansah & Torto, 2013; OwuEwie, 2006). In effect, English afforded people the social and economic status to be elite and powerful, whilst the indigenous languages in Ghana were framed as local, lower status, and unrewarding. The effect of such hegemonic and neoliberal ideologies is seen in how people use English or the local language to position themselves in the Ghanaian society (Edu-Buandoh, 2008; Owusu Ansah & Torto, 2013; Owu-Ewie, 2006). English in the USA The history of language in the USA sits on a slippery frame of language pluralism in which other languages were accepted, and language imperialism through English was used to assimilate native Americans or immigrants from non-European countries. The United States in the 19th century had a rich tradition and history of bilingual education and native language instruction (Crawford, 1992, 2004; Kloss, 1977, 1998). For example, children were taught in German and Dutch in Pennsylvania; French in Louisiana, and Spanish and German in Texas (Bybee, Henderson & Hinojosa, 2014). Linguistic pluralism was promoted during this era as reflected through bilingual education and 51 native language instruction policy. Multilingual newspapers and theater productions abounded during this era (Bybee et al., 2014; Pavlenko, 2002). However, the linguistic pluralism of this period was exclusive of language from the Asian and Mexican American communities. The monolingual ideology of English as the language of the Americans became eminent around the 20th century. This ideology was influenced by the massive influx of immigrants from non-English speaking parts of Europe (Pavlenko, 2002). The rise of this monolingual language ideology occurred concomitantly with a broader effort to assimilate new immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe into the language and culture of the country (Bybee et al., 2014; Pavlenko, 2002). This monolingual language ideology persisted in US schooling and society for most of the first half of the twentieth century (Bybee et al., 2014; Pavlenko, 2002). This phenomenon bore a resemblance to the linguistic imperialism that occurred in Ghana. Linguistic Imperialism in the USA Linguistic imperialism in the history of language is like a ghost that appears and disappears. Before the 1790s, Native American languages were initially used in missionary work and education. However, when competition for territory and resources intensified between the US settlers and Native Americans as the indigenous people of the land, the landscape of language and education turned into a battlefield and a weapon of imperialism (Bybee et al., 2014; Pavlenko, 2002). Language education in the USA was monolingual and geared towards christening and ‘Englishing’ non-native speakers of English : “the only prospect of success was in taking the children in boarding schools and 52 making them ‘English in language, civilized in manners, Christian in religion” (Spring, 1996, p. 152). This led to the loss of languages that were indigenous to many of the nonEnglish-speaking communities in the USA. This language loss exemplifies linguistic imperialism and is comparable to the way Ghanaians were being groomed to be an elite group capable of meeting the linguistic and cultural needs of their colonial masters. In the Philippines, for example, English was exclusively used for public education from 1898 to 1940 (Bybee et al., 2014; Pavlenko, 2002). The hegemonic ideologies on language education in the USA were characterized by legal battles around bilingual education with a slight victory to establish bilingual education laws that required provision of resources for non-English speaking children in the mainstream classroom (Baker, 2011). This victory forced schools to reflect on and address their emerging bilingual population (Gándara, Moran, & García, 2004; Ovando, 2003). In this section, I argue that the specific ways of seeing and representing linguistic, racial, cultural, and social differences were essential to the setting up of literacy programs and the construction of multiple lenses for exploring people's linguistic identity. Linguistic Identity in the USA The ideologies of 'citizen' and immigrant frame how linguistic identities are constructed in the USA context. Citizenship is affiliated to native-like speaking of American English besides being White (Pomerantz, 2002). Competency in other languages such as Spanish, French, Mandarin, and Chinese, though considered valuable linguistic capitals for most elites in the current USA, are associated with alienness, immigration, and illegality (Bybee et al., 2014; García & Gonzalez, 1995; King, 2009; 53 Linton, 2009; Pavlenko, 2002; Pomerantz, 2002). Speaking any other language besides English has repercussions for immigrants in the USA. For instance, in 2009 a Dallas Morning News story featured a policeman ticketing a woman for not speaking English in Texas. English competency promotes acceptance into American society even though other languages such as Spanish are indigenous to most Americans (De Fina & King, 2011). This has led to many Spanish speaking families transitioning to be monolingual English speakers (De Fina & King, 2011). There have also been controversial, antiimmigrant laws such as SB1070, passed in Arizona in April 2010, which required that police request immigration status when there was 'reasonable' suspicion that a person was unlawfully present in the USA (De Fina & King, 2011). While the term 'reasonably' suspect remained ambiguous in legislative terms, it was often assumed that speaking Spanish or any other non-elite language translated into 'reasonably suspect.' Together, these discourses and social practices around English literacy are tightly linked to a set of ideologies that equate speaking English and being an American citizen, devaluing Spanish and other non-elite languages (De Fina & King, 2011). English as a colonial language wields a lot of power in both Ghana and the USA influencing how people choose or use it. Its imperialistic characteristics are highly visible through language education and ideological discourses on English as a national language. English is the official language of education, government, and economics in Ghana. English wields an even broader power, as evidenced by its requirement for citizenship, social inclusion, and safety in the USA. Immigrants who speak another language than English stand the risk of discrimination and exclusion. The literature on English in the USA and Ghana unpacks unequal relations and power embedded ideological discourses 54 on English and its dominance on other languages. They open a new lens through which to explore the language experiences, identities, and agency (in the form of investments and practices) of adult ESL women learning English in English speaking countries. Chapter Summary The bodies of literature discussed so far are useful in thinking about literacy as a social construct that is beyond reading and writing (Gee, 2002; New London Group, 1996). Literacy is gorged with power and involves the performance of multiple identities and agency through the use of numerous mediational tools or multiliteracies and investments in multiple Discourse communities (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Darvin & Norton, 2015; Gee, 2002; New London Group, 1996). The classroom just becomes a vignette of the multiple discourses and Discourse communities that ESL students straddle in real life. There is a myriad out-of-school literacy practices that are different from the literacy practices highlighted in the ESL classroom (Omerbašić, 2015; Perry, 2007; Warriner, 2007). This makes it important that we attend to the discourses and Discourse communities that ESL students engage in outside the ESL classroom to have a nuanced understanding of their English literacy. The theoretical framework of critical sociocultural theory of literacy with its emphasis on learners’ negotiation of power through the enactment of agency and identity becomes a potent tool in unpacking the literacy experiences of adult ESL students. The literature on the literacy experiences of adult immigrant women learning English in English-speaking countries is drenched in discourses of deficit (Frye, 1999; Pavlenko, Blackledge, Piller & Teutsch-Dwyer, 2001), dominance (Cumming & Gill, 55 1991; Rockhill, 1983; Skilton-Sylvester, 2002; Tran & Nguyen, 1994) and ambivalence (Gordon; 2004; Kouritzin, 2000; Larrotta & Serrano, 2011; Menard-Warwick, 2006; Pavlenko, 2005; Warriner, 2004) about literacy acquisition. While these women are projected as lagging behind men due to gendered gatekeeping practices that limit their access to linguistic resources (Cumming & Gill, 1991; Rockhill 1983; Skilton-Sylvester, 2002; Tran & Nguyen, 1994), they are also viewed as performing agency and multiple identities through their investment in English literacy (Gordon; 2004; Kouritzin, 2000; Larrotta & Serrano, 2011; Menard-Warwick, 2006; Pavlenko, 2005; Warriner, 2004). The gendered identity of women in different parts of the world is shaped by different cultures, beliefs, social norms, and expectations, highlighting the need to consider the historical location of these women for a flexible understanding of agency. The historical situation of the literacy experiences of adult immigrants in ESL programs in Ghana and the USA is fraught with linguistic imperialism that highlights English as a privileged linguistic capital. English literacy positively correlates to higher social status, citizenship (in the USA context), and cultural capital that leads to economic opportunities (De Fina and King, 2011; Edu-Buandoh, 2016; Osabu-Kle, 2000; Owu-Ewie & Edu-Buandoh, 2014). The history of the English language in the USA and Ghana speaks volumes of the forms of agency around literacy and helps us better understand the forms of agency enacted by adult ESL students in Ghana and the USA, as they engage in various Discourse communities to learn English. I take from this body of literature that, first, literacy cannot be viewed as merely an epistemological or procedural issue but must be defined primarily in political and ethical terms. It is political in that language is implicated in relations of power that are 56 discursive and ideological and embedded through discourses within Discourse communities. It is ethical in that there is a differential value associated with languages. ESL learners access languages differently depending on the circumstances of their gendered relationships as well as the neoliberal and hegemonic ideologies surrounding English. There are investments and choices about how one is to act in the face of ideologies, values, and experiences. We need to know what ESL students are doing, and where, how, and why they are doing what they do in order for us to understand their literacy experiences. It is in light of this understanding that I use the framework of critical sociocultural literacy, which explores the social context in which people negotiate literacy with an emphasis on their agentic investment in different Discourse communities and their use of mediational tools to have a nuanced understanding of the literacy experiences of women learning English outside the ESL classroom. 57 Figure 2.1. Critical Sociocultural Theory of Literacy CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY This study is framed by a narrative inquiry methodological approach that conceptualizes human experience as shaped by stories that are embedded in social, cultural and institutional contexts (Clandinin, 2013). Thus, the focus of a narrative inquiry is not only to valorize individual experiences but to explore the social, cultural, familial, linguistic, and institutional narratives within which an individual's experiences are constituted, shaped, expressed and enacted (Clandinin, 2013). Narrative inquiry conceptualizes experience as a storied phenomenon that is relational, continuous, social, and embedded in places that we need to attend to or explore, called commonplaces (Clandinin, 2013). It involves living, telling, retelling and reliving. People live out stories and tell stories (Clandinin, 2013). As we retell or inquire into stories, we move beyond stories as fixed entities and begin to retell our stories. As we retell the stories or inquire into the stories, we may begin to relive the stories. To live our stories is to tell it to ourselves and possibly others and retell it again (Carr, 1986). There are three dimensions to commonplaces that are important to explore in any narrative inquiry: temporal commonplaces, social commonplaces, and place (see Figure 3.1). In temporal commonplaces, the emphasis is on the past, present, and future of the people under study. Social commonplaces, however, attend both to personal conditions (feelings, hopes, 59 desires, aesthetic reactions, and moral dispositions of people) (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006) as well as social conditions (cultural, social, institutional and linguistic narratives) (Clandinin, 2013). Thus, social commonplace portrays both inward and outward conditions and contexts. Turning inward, it attends to our emotions, our aesthetic reactions, our moral responses. Turning outward, it attends to what is happening and the events and people in our experiences. The construct of 'place' also depicts humans as thinking simultaneously backward and forward, inward and outward, with attentiveness to places (Clandinin, 2013). This is based on our histories on where we have been to, lived, or experienced. For example, as a Ghanaian living in the USA, the place of Ghana carries an essential meaning in my history and memory. It affects how I interpret and understand things around me. Even though I live in the USA, I still have the Ghanaian culture within me. By emphasizing place, temporal commonplaces, and social commonplaces, narrative inquiry complements the critical sociocultural theory of literacy that frames this study. A critical sociocultural theory of literacy foregrounds the role of microlevel processes such as subjectivity and macrolevel processes such as space and place in literacy practices. Thus, the literacy experiences of adult immigrant women are framed as embedded in investments in Discourse communities across space and time. Therefore, narrative inquiry complements this framework and helps unpack the literacy experiences of transnational subjects such as adult immigrant women since it allows for an analysis of microlevel and macrolevel processes through the social and temporal commonplaces. The microlevel examines subjectivity in narrative processes and multiliteracies practices while at the macrolevel, we can explore the impact of power relations on how 60 subjectivities are enacted by attending to what is happening in Discourse communities, to the events and people in our experiences. Also, by attending to place, it echoes the social situatedness of literacy as a sociocultural phenomenon. This chapter describes the study's research methodology and includes my research design, which includes discussions of: (a) research context and participants (b) data collection, (c) data analysis, followed by a review of my positionality and ethical considerations. Research Design This study focused on six adult immigrant women enrolled in English as a second language (ESL) programs in the USA and Ghana to explore through narratives their English learning experiences. This study’s English learning experiences are understood as a storied phenomenon that is embedded in learners' past, present, and future use of English, their literacy tools, and their investments in Discourse communities that engage with English outside ESL classrooms. Drawing on a critical sociocultural perspective of literacy (Darvin & Norton, 2015; Gee, 2015; New London Group, 1996), this qualitative study utilized narrative analysis to focus on the following research questions: 1) What do their stories about their daily experiences with English outside the ESL classroom reveal about their identities within the English Discourse communities they engage with as they learn English? 2) What literacy tools do these women use in these English Discourse communities? How do they use them? Who do they use them with and for what purpose? 3) How do their identities and their participation in English Discourse communities shape their investment in learning English? 61 Research Contexts Data for this research were gathered from participants recruited from the United Methodist ESL program in the USA and the Eagle Vision Institute ESL program in Ghana. In the next section, I will give a brief overview of the recruitment sites for this research with an emphasis on my involvement at each site and the recruitment process. The United Methodist Adult ESL Program The United Methodist ESL program is located in a mining town in the southwestern United States. It began in February 2014 as a result of a study by the Methodist church that identified the high need for an adult ESL program to meet the linguistic needs of potential church members. Located in a predominantly White community (over 80% Caucasian) and populated with expatriate mining company workers, the United Methodist ESL served English language learners from Congo, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and other non-English speaking countries. This church-run program happened to be the only fully funded and most consistently staffed facility (congregants and the pastor served as volunteer teachers) that catered to the needs of adult English learners from various counties. Apart from the ESL classes offered at this facility, there were also citizenship classes. Learners often traveled for more than an hour to attend ESL classes. There were 23 students of whom 19 were women between the ages of 20 and 75. Paradoxically, none of the learners at this center were members of the church. The ESL program was organized into classes at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced English proficiency levels held every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday in the morning and evenings to cater to the needs of learners. 62 My involvement in the United Methodist ESL program began in March 2016 as an observer and later transitioned into an instructor for the advanced class from May 5, 2016, to May 6, 2017. I discovered this ESL program coincidentally as I was searching for a daycare for my then 4-year-old daughter. My family had relocated into the area as a result of my husband's job transfer. Each time I dropped my daughter at the daycare around 8 am, I observed other women with books and files clutched under their armpits entering a classroom in the building. I later got to know that those women were students in the advanced class of an adult ESL program that was run by the Methodist church. Before my relocation into this town, I had a keen interest in literacy and language acquisition and had plans of researching an ESL population. This adult ESL program looked like a good location for my research, so I arranged to meet with the director of the ESL program to learn more about the program and discuss possible classroom observations and the recruitment of research study participants at the school. I was granted permission to observe the advanced classes once a week for 2 1/2 hours and later transitioned from an observer to an instructor for another section of the advanced class on Tuesday evenings and Thursday mornings. My instruction in this class continued until my family relocated to Ghana West Africa as a result of my husband's employment change. Data for this study were based on the literacy experiences of adult immigrant women who had graduated or were enrolled in the United Methodist adult advance ESL program. These women were predominantly wives of workers in the mine who had moved with their families to the USA as a result of job transfers from Peru, Chile, Congo, and Mexico. These women had varying proficiency levels in English as well as varied educational levels. 63 The Ghana Eagle Vision Institute ESL Program Located in Accra, Ghana, Eagle Vision Institute provides ESL classes for students from neighboring Francophone countries in West Africa as well as immigrants from nonEnglish speaking countries. Eagle Vision started in 2004 with two students. Initially a TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) preparation center, Eagle Vision experienced two moves before settling into their current location. Considering the number of students who were willing to study English, French, and business, in 2007, the center introduced two language courses and professional courses in business management. Currently, the center has over 150 students studying languages, business, and computing. The classes in ESL start from the beginning level up to the advanced level. Students in this school are a mixture of children between the ages of 6 to adults in their 50s. My May 2017 relocation influenced my involvement in the Eagle Vision Institute ESL program in Ghana, which is also my motherland. I had already observed the United Methodist ESL program in the USA. I wanted to use the opportunity to be in Ghana to extend the scope of my research to have a broader and more in-depth view of the literacy experiences of adult ESL students across two nation-states. The ESL program market in the Ghanaian context was huge, with advertisements for recruitment into schools pasted on walls, trees, and tables and more than 20 ESL schools to choose from in the Greater Accra region. Secretaries to some of the ESL programs I visited were sometimes reluctant to give detailed information about their schools and served as gatekeepers to access the directors of the programs. I later understood this attitude as part of their precautionary measures to keep spies away from their programs since the market was 64 very competitive. I encountered an exceptional secretary who directed me to students who were immigrants and were studying English in Ghanaian ESL programs. These students recommended Eagle Vision ESL program as the best in the region. I visited the school and later got permission to observe classes for recruitment from July 26 to August 3, 2017. I left Ghana and came back to the United States to continue my Ph.D. program on August 5, 2017. Participants Since I moved from Arizona and also had to move back to the USA from Ghana, I had the limitation of not having face to face interview time with my participants from both Ghana and the USA. My recruitment process, therefore, utilized recorded videos, recruitment surveys, and exchange of contact information. Participants were recruited from the Advanced ESL sections of the Eagle Vision Center (2 classrooms) and the United Methodist ESL Center (1 classroom) using a study overview recruitment video shared by the teacher in each classroom during a class period in November 2017. Participants were selected based on the following four criteria: 1) identify as an adult immigrant woman learning English as an additional language; 2) enrollment in the United Methodist adult ESL program in Safford, Arizona or the Eagle Vision Institute adult ESL program in Accra, Ghana, 3) recruitment survey that reports engagement in at least three groups/activities conducted in English outside the ESL classroom, and 4) the ability to converse using basic English (self-reported and observed during recruitment meeting). My recruitment process for this study involved three steps. I provided an English 65 presentation video of myself explaining the research focus, purpose and participation expectations to adult ESL learners. The teachers showed this video during a class in an Advanced ESL section at each selected adult ESL center (2 at Eagle Vision Center, one at United Methodist ESL Center). At the end of the video, students interested in participating were given a copy of the consent form to review, which included instructions to provide their preferred contact information to me (e.g., phone, email, Skype ID, Imo ID) by email. Using their contact information, I scheduled a call through the preferred medium of participants for further briefing on the research process. A brief recruitment survey was administered during this meeting. The survey included questions on their country of origin, how long they had lived in the current country, the languages they spoke, other ways they engaged in English, including their engagement in groups/activities conducted in English outside the ESL classroom (work, church, etc.), and their ability to converse in basic English. My observations supplemented the criteria on their ability to speak in basic English during online meetings with them. I later reviewed the consent form previously provided and obtained their signed consent to participate in the research. These completed consent forms were later mailed to me from the offices of the respective ESL programs. Six adult ESL immigrant women participated in this study. Three of them were enrolled in the Eagle Vision ESL Institute in Ghana, and the other three were enrolled in the United Methodist church ESL program. I now offer a brief introduction to the six participating women and their varied immigration and demographic backgrounds. 66 Tina Tina, a 32-year-old woman was born and raised in Chile. She married her husband at the age of 28 in Chile. At the time of our interview, she had a 3-year-old daughter born in Chile 2 years before her immigration to the USA. Tina moved to the USA 1 1/2 years prior to the start of this study with her husband and daughter. Her husband was transferred from Chile to the USA to work in one of the copper mines in the state of Arizona. Tina had a bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Pontificia Universidad Catholica de Chile and was pursuing an online master’s degree in Business Communication at Louisiana State University in the USA. Cinthy Cinthy, a 34-year-old woman was born in Trujillo in the northern part of Peru. She was, however, raised in several towns in Peru due to her father’s work, which required the family to relocate to different parts of the country continually. Cinthy worked for 8 years with a steel manufacturing company in Peru as an industrial engineer. She met her husband at the steel company. Cinthy immigrated to the USA with her husband and 3 daughters 1 1/2 years prior to this study. Her husband had been promoted and transferred to work in the USA. Cinthy had earned an online master’s degree in Supply Chain management at the time of our first interview and was enrolled in another online master’s program in Business Administration at the University of Michigan. She was also enrolled in college-level English courses at Eastern Arizona College. 67 Makara Makara, a 38-year-old woman, was born in Santiago, Chile, but spent most of her early childhood in the South of Chile. She had a degree in social communications from the University of Monica Herrera in Chile. She had worked as an executive production manager for TV commercials and Opera productions in Chile. Makara’s husband was transferred to the USA to work with an American branch of his company. At the time of our interview, Makara had been in the USA with her husband and three sons for about 3 1/2 years. Joy Joy, a 24-year-old single woman, was born and raised in Abidjan, the economic capital city of the Ivory Coast in West Africa. After earning her certificate of elementary education (Certificat d'études primaires élémentaires—CEPE) in Yopougon, Abidjan, Joy attended the municipal college of Attécoubé for her certificate of the lower cycle of secondary study (brevet d'étude du premier cycle—BEPC). She got her baccalaureate (main diploma required to pursue university studies) and later earned a certificate in human resources and communication. She worked as a secretary until she moved to Ghana. At the time of our interview, Joy had been in Ghana for about 6 months. She was enrolled at the Eagle Vision Institute in Accra Ghana to learn English. Imma Imma is a 26-year-old single woman born and raised in Benin. She had a bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics and was pursuing a master’s degree in 68 Biostatistics in Benin. She was in Ghana for 7 months to learn English and had enrolled in an adult ESL program at the Eagle Vision Institute in Accra, Ghana. Winnie Winnie, a 24-year-old single woman, was born and raised in the town of BoboDioulasso in Burkina Faso, West Africa. At the time of the interview, Winnie was in Ghana to learn English. She traveled to Ghana to study English after obtaining her certificate in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). In Ghana, Winnie enrolled in an ESL program at the Eagle Vision Institute. She was also pursuing a degree in Business Management at the Pentecost University of Ghana during our first interview. Although these women had different demographic and immigration backgrounds, they had commonalities regarding their enrollment in ESL programs and their status as immigrants learning English in an English-speaking country. Their narratives on their English literacy experiences diverged and converged to project literacy as a socially situated practice that involves the enactment of agency within Discourse communities. A detailed description of the participant's literacy experiences will be provided in Chapter 4. In the next section, I discuss how I collected data through a narrative inquiry approach. This discussion will include a detailed description of the tools that were used for data gathering as well as the process and methods that were involved in the data collection. 69 Data Collection and Analysis Narrative inquiry utilizes stories on lived experiences as a source of knowledge in understanding a particular phenomenon and involves collaborative relations between the researcher and the researched (Clandinin, 2013). Collaboration in this context constitutes a relationship in which knowledge is shared and interpreted with two or more people’s sphere of experience (Clandinin, 2013). Thus, the stories lived and told in a narrative inquiry are always co-constructed between researchers and participants. A narrative inquirer is therefore not an objective inquirer but a relational inquirer who thinks narratively about his/her experiences, the experiences of participants, and other experiences that become visible alongside telling stories and hearing other people's stories (Clandinin, 2013). A narrative inquiry is an ethically dense approach. Ethical considerations were reflected throughout the data gathering/collection and data analysis process. In a narrative inquiry, researchers negotiate with participants in an ongoing relational inquiry space, which is termed as a field. And there are two possible starting points for narrative inquiry: "listening to individuals tell their stories and living alongside participants as they live and tell their stories" (Clandinin, 2013, p. 45). The most frequently used starting point and the starting point that was utilized in this study was telling stories. The methods commonly used in this context were conversations or interviews, and sometimes artifacts to trigger the telling of stories (Clandinin, 2013). Artifacts in this study were encoded texts and included photographs, written texts, documents, plans, annals, and chronologies from participants. This study also included observations of ESL classrooms to capture the language and literacy tools used by adult 70 immigrant women. These methods are discussed below. Observations I observed one advanced class for the United Methodist ESL program for 2 1/2 hours every Tuesday from March 2016 to May 2017. The observations focused on the classroom environment, interactions between students and teachers, activities, actions, and materials used (text, technology, pen, pencil, tablets, phones, etc.). In the classroom environment, I observed how they were seated (grouped, dispersed, engaged, disengaged, participating in lessons, etc.). My observations also focused on the activities that occurred in the classroom, specifically topics they learned, texts, and resources they used. I also focused on interactions between the students and their teacher, and student and student with an emphasis on the languages they used, when they used it, with whom they used it and for what purpose. At the Eagle Vision Institute, I observed two advanced classes from May 27, 2017, to July 3, 2017, every day from 10 am to noon and then from noon to 2 pm. As I did in the United Methodist classroom observations, I focused on the classroom environment, interactions between students and teachers, activities, actions and materials used (text, technology, pen, pencil, tablets, phones, etc.). In the classroom environment, I observed how they were seated (grouped, dispersed, engaged, disengaged, participating in lessons, etc.). My observations also focused on the activities that occurred in the classroom, specifically topics they learned, texts, and resources they used. I also focused on interactions between the students and their teacher, and student and student with an emphasis on the languages they used, when they used it, with whom they used it and for 71 what purpose. To record information gathered through observations at the two sites of my research, I wrote fieldnotes (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2011). Fieldnotes were in the form of detailed descriptions of observations made at the schools and were written daily during and after observations were made. Direct words from students also included specific questions and answers during lessons. My fieldnotes also included reflections on observed data and how they compared to the theoretical framework and literature on adult ESL students learning English in English-speaking countries. What I observed did not deviate from the literature on the classroom literacy practices of adult immigrant women learning English. I was also more focused on what adult ESL students did with literacy outside the ESL classroom. My observations in the classroom served as a way of entering the sites, gaining membership or insider status for recruitment purposes for this study. My observation also gave me insights to better understand how the inside ESL classroom literacy experiences of the women diverged or converged with the literature on their experiences inside and outside ESL classrooms. Interviews/Conversations In this study, I used the terms interview and conversations interchangeably to create a relaxed space in which I could relate to participants as they shared their stories (Clandinin, 2013; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). In-depth interviews/conversations were the fundamental tools for gathering data in this research because of their potential to generate detailed, thick descriptions and also capture a person's perspective of an event or experience (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2012). The interviews and conversations in this study 72 were framed by Seidman's (2006) series of three 90-minute interview sections to capture a succinct description of place/space, context, and identities that unfolded in this study. The first interview covered demographics, the educational and English learning background (including current ESL program participation), reasons for learning English, and the places (Discourse communities that participants used English outside the ESL classroom). The second interview occurred within a month of the first interview. During the second interview, participants were asked to provide detailed stories, examples, and documents they wanted to share on their language and literacy experiences. This interview included the places/groups where they used English outside the ESL classroom and the tools they used within these settings/groups. Participants were given the option to take photos of aspects of their out-of-class English language and literacy activities. They were willing to share these activities discussed in the interview to supplement the second interview. The third interview was conducted no later than a month after the second interview. It focused on collecting any photos taken by the participant and their links to specific activities discussed in the second interview. The third interview also focused on participant's English language/literacy experiences outside the ESL classroom they believed moved them closer to learning English. It also explored the reasons participants gave for learning English, how these experiences outside the ESL classroom have shaped how strongly they felt (or not) about continuing their English learning, and why. The first interview established the context of the participants' experience. The second allowed the participants to highlight the details of their experience within the context in which it occurs. And the third encouraged the participants to reflect on the meaning their experience held for them. This combination of exploring the past to clarify the events that 73 led participants to where they are now, and describing the concrete details of their present experience, establishes conditions for reflecting upon what they are currently doing regarding English literacy. Seidman (2006) argues that the third interview can be productive only if the foundation for it had been established in the first two. Even though it was in the third interview that I focused on the participants' understanding of their experience, through all three interviews, participants were making meaning. Seidman (2006) strongly recommends that the three-interview structure is followed religiously in research in order not to erode the focus of each interview. Thus, each interview served a purpose both by itself and within the series. Mindful of this context, I ensured that openended, in-depth questions were used during interviews. They maintained a balance between providing enough openness for the participants to tell their stories and a focus on the interview structure (McCracken, 1988). The interviews were spaced out not more than a month apart so that participants could maintain connections between interview sessions (Seidman, 2006). Artifacts To supplement the interviews conducted for this research, I also collected artifacts/documents that could provide additional information on the mediational tools and the Discourse communities that the adult ESL students in Ghana and the USA used within various Discourse communities outside the classroom context. Artifacts are useful tools for understanding the setting or context of activities or relations (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995; Marshall & Rossman, 2006). The artifacts collected in this study included screenshots of TV programs and movies, handouts and social media 74 conversations/chats, etc. In this section, I have discussed the research sites that inform this study and my involvement in these sites as an observer and an instructor. I have also outlined the recruitment process in this study, which was highly digital and involved videos, surveys, emails, and phone calls. Data collection for this study also included interviews, artifacts, and classroom observations. In the next section, I will discuss the process of data analysis. Data Analysis Narrative analysis is about how protagonists interpret things (Bruner 1990, p. 5) and how narrative inquirers systematically interpret their interpretations (Riessman, 1993, 2008). This approach gives prominence to human agency and imaginations and is well suited to studies of subjectivity/ identity (Riessman, 1993, 2008). A narrative analysis makes it possible to examine practices of power such as gendered inequality and racial suppression that may be taken for granted by individual speakers (Riessman, 1993, 2008). Narrative analysis is particularly useful in this study since I explored the identities of adult immigrant women across English Discourse communities. In this analysis, I positioned the voice of the participant in a particular time, place, or setting (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) to unpack their enactment of identities and agency across Discourse communities. To highlight the voice of participants in stories, I developed a story map. This story map was a tool that helped organize learners' recounting of past, present, and future literacy experiences. This process included transcribing recorded interview data into a narrative form and then creating a story map from the transcribed data for each 75 participant. These story maps were constructed with participants to ensure that I was echoing the right voices and painting the correct pictures of participants in their story maps. Data analysis in this study used descriptive, process, and narrative coding (Wortham, 2001). In qualitative inquiry, coding, or code is the language (symbol, text), a word that assigns attributes to language-based or visual data (Saldaña, 2013). Descriptive codes highlighted the basic descriptive elements of the data, such as the mediational tools used (languages, texts, technology) within English Discourse communities. Process codes focused on denoting actions within data such as interacting with friends, families, or enacting identities in Discourse communities as evidenced through narratives. Narrative coding (Wortham, 2001) was used to highlight various elements of power that shaped participants’ narratives and identities. This approach draws on Wortham's (2001) perspective, which recognizes how people enact various identities to position themselves in particular ways and Bakhtin’s (1981) concept of dialogicality, which conceptualizes narratives as always intersecting with power as they integrate prior voices, experiences, and contexts. Following the coding, the story maps were analyzed for patterns and themes that emanated within and across them to illuminate heterogeneity in the enactment of identity and agency regarding English literacy across different Discourse communities (Merriam, 2009). The data analysis process in this study included reflexivity (Pillow, 2003, 2010), which allowed me to interrogate data collection, sources, and my analysis about the representation of the participants' enactment of agency and identities. Through reflexivity, I unpacked the multiple meanings in the data collected as well as my ability 76 or lack of ability to account for all of the possible perspectives, as well as the influences of micro- and macrolevel contexts. The final stage of analysis in this study was based on theoretical or selective coding (Saldaña, 2013). It involved connecting the core categories or themes to create a storyline that explained the literacy experiences of adult immigrant women in this study. This final storyline was also co-constructed with participants in the spirit of relational living and collaboration with participants. This storyline is however not a final story or a single story. Narrative inquiry is about exposing the muddiness of data and opening up possibilities for different stories (Clandinin, 2013). In this section, I have outlined the processes for analyzing the data, which included a narrative inquiry approach to gathering data and a narrative analysis approach to interpreting data. This process included descriptive, process and narrative coding, coconstruction of story maps, and a theoretical coding that connected core themes to explain adult immigrant ESL learners’ experiences with English. All these processes involved reflexivity, which highlighted my positionality as an English language learner and an immigrant in the USA. These processes also facilitated my ability to account for or not account for the multiple perspectives and negotiation of power and agency within Discourse communities. My Storied Life as a Multilingual, Multicultural, and Immigrant Woman My background as a multilingual and English language learner impacts how I conceptualize language and literacy. Ghana, my homeland, was formally colonized by the British and inherited the English language as one of the visible remnants of colonial rule. 77 In a country with over 45 dialects, the English language serves as the official or formal language of the nation even though various dialects continue to be studied in schools. Classrooms, during my elementary school days, were the battlegrounds for language choice as students and teachers battled over when and where to speak local languages. While some schools displayed banners that prohibited the speaking of local languages in classrooms, teachers designed ‘chains of shame’ that hung around the necks of students who defied their command to not speak local languages in the classroom. Some students even wrote the names of their peers’ names whenever they spoke their local languages in the classroom for the teacher's attention. Students who found their names on such lists were often subjected to corporal punishment in the form of caning on their palm, backs, and buttocks. There were multiple forms of agency toward speaking or not speaking English in the classroom during my primary school days. We had students who did not care about wearing the 'chains of shame' and receiving corporal punishment for speaking vernacular in the classroom. These students often appeared skinny or fat randomly on certain parts of their bodies. Specifically, their backs and buttocks where they lined their dresses with foam to lessen the impact of the cane whenever their names ended up on the list of vernacular speakers. I had my form of agency in that context. I continually appropriated my choice of language to locations and contexts. For example, my father once coached me to use English whenever I got myself into an argument or felt intimidated at school, so that way, I could have the upper hand in all situations. This advice, although it worked wonders for me regarding getting out of confrontations, depicts an ideology of English as a symbol of power. With this experience, my understanding of language learning and literacy is heavily impregnated 78 with the imagery of the chameleon displaying varied colors based on its environment. Thus, in my perspective, literacy is socially situated and multiple across contexts and involves agency. For example, to be socially recognized as a good student in elementary school, I had to speak the Queen's language (a correct form of grammar or vocabulary according to the British standards of English). I also needed to know when and where to use English appropriately as prescribed by the school's language policies. Speaking Twi or any other local language in the classroom positioned me as a defiant and less brilliant student. Language use in this context is geared toward creating and acting out different kinds of people (me) for all sorts of occasions (school, classroom, home). Another aspect of my storied life that influences this study is my status as an immigrant woman in the USA. As a Ghanaian living in the USA, my interest in maintaining affiliations with my people back home and the USA society has been bifocal. As a part of me yearns to embrace the food, music, dress, and language of my present environment, another part of me pulls me back into my historical and culturally embedded understanding of food, language, music, and culture. The nostalgia to connect to the culture and people back home in Ghana was so great at the initial time of my migration to the USA that my family spent most of the weekend either locating African markets or communicating with families back home on the phone. We tuned in to local radio stations online just to keep abreast with news from home. I am still connected to families back home through YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp. Paradoxically, I had a similar yearning to return to the USA when I visited my family in Ghana 3 years ago. Even though I was enjoying my family, friends, and local dishes, I was also daydreaming of McDonald's burgers, tacos, and enchiladas. This nostalgia of having homes away from 79 homes creates in my mind's eye an image of an expanded repertoire of Discourse communities of home and abroad in the lives of immigrants. Home becomes both familiar and unfamiliar in the life of immigrants as we straddle different cultures and spaces (Trinh, 2011). Said (1988) argues that the essential privilege of "exile is to have, not just one set of eyes but half a dozen, each of them corresponding to the places you have been" (p. 48). I belong to multiple discourses and Discourse communities that frame who I am and who I want to be in various contexts. My experiences as a multilingual, English language learner and an immigrant illuminates literacy as a 'site of struggle' which involves the performance of agency and enactment of identities. While the literacy experiences of these women are diverse and different from mine, we share commonalities as immigrants in English-speaking countries. Ethical Considerations Throughout this research study, I was mindful of the participants’ narratives and treated each narrative as treasured memory that was made of people's life experiences. Therefore, I strived to preserve the authenticity of their experiences through a coconstruction of data and constant member checks (Janesick, 2000). This practice created a bond and a 'we' feeling between my research participants (Schutz, 1967). This 'we' feeling was particularly helpful in this research, given that I was far away from my participants and could only communicate with them through emails, phone calls, and online spaces. Also, I engaged in in-depth reflections about how I was collecting and analyzing 80 data as well as my bias and positionality and how these screened interpretations in this study. These reflections were documented during the data gathering and data analysis phase of this study. Through memoing, I recorded my impressions on how I was framing this research. I also documented my thoughts about what I observed in the classrooms, and how I was generating and interpreting codes as well as the relationship among codes, themes, and theories in the study. This study was also subject to IRB approval to ensure that no physical, emotional or psychological damage was done to any participant in the research process. However, I was still conscious of the power that is embedded in my role as a researcher, as well as my commitment to a relational or collaborative relationship with my participants. Therefore, I took precautionary measures to maintain a healthy and respectful relationship with participants by informing them of the purpose of my study and the processes I used in the study. Participants were made to understand that they were not under compulsion to go through the research and were at liberty to drop out without any harm or sanctions. Pseudonyms were also used to protect the identity of the participants. Chapter Summary In this chapter, I have laid out the research design, research context, and participants, data gathering and analysis processes of this study. Data were gathered from six participants enrolled in ESL programs from the Eagle Vision ESL Institute in Ghana and the United Methodist ESL program in the USA. The data gathering process included interviews, observations in classrooms, and collection of artifacts. Data gathered were transcribed, coded, and transformed into story maps that were later interpreted for 81 common themes. In a commitment to the narrative inquiry framework, which is embedded in a multiplicity of interpretations and identities through narratives, representations and analysis of data were heavily influenced by reflexivity. It also included collaborative co-construction of data and knowledge, to illuminate the multiplicity of voices, identities, and agency that emanated from the narratives in this study. In the next chapter, I present the findings of this study. 82 Narrative Inquiry commonplaces Temporality Inquiring the past, present and future practices and events Sociality Attending to personal (feelings, hopes, desires, etc) and social conditions (cultural, familial, institutional, linquistic, inquiry relations) contexts Place The specific concrete physical and topologial boundaries of place or sequences of place where events/practices take place Figure 3.1. Three Commonplace Dimensions of Narrative Inquiry. Based on data from Clandinin (2013). CHAPTER 4 NARRATIVE PORTRAITS OF IMMIGRANT WOMEN’S ENGLISH LEARNING EXPERIENCES In this chapter, I present a within-case analysis of the English learning experiences of six adult immigrant women: Tina, Cinthy, and Makara in the USA, and Joy, Imma, and Winnie in Ghana. Within these case studies, I use the women's narratives to paint a picture of the complex interplay between their identities, their forms of agency, and their commitment to learning English. The quotes embedded within each case study's heading reflect each woman's voice serving as signposts into essential aspects of their English learning experiences. The case studies are structured into three sections and are aligned with the narrative inquiry approach that frames the methodology of this study. As previously discussed, narrative inquiry attends to temporal, social, and place commonplaces. Temporal commonplaces emphasize the past, present, and future of the people under study. Social commonplaces, in contrast, attend both to personal conditions, including feelings, hopes, desires, aesthetic reactions, and moral depositions of people. They also include cultural, social, institutional, and linguistic narratives based on social conditions (Clandinin, 2013; Connelly & Clandinin, 2006). The construct of 'place' adds another element with attentiveness to locations when examining how we think simultaneously backward and forward, inward, and outward based on where we have 84 been (Clandinin, 2013). This narrative approach to framing the case studies complements the critical sociocultural theory that highlights learners’ identities, agency, and investment in multiple Discourse communities. The first section of the within-case analysis focused on the personal backgrounds of learners to illuminate salient demographic and immigration backgrounds that shape their experiences with English language. I specifically focused on their past, present, and desired future experiences with English as they engage in various Discourse communities to learn English. See Table 4.1 for a summary of the demographic and immigration portraits and English learning experiences of the six immigrant women learning English in the USA and Ghana. The second section highlights their engagement with multiliteracies repertoires within Discourse communities to enact various identities and perform agency. The third section zooms in on how their positioning and participation within specific Discourse communities shaped their identities and their investment in learning English. Finally, I offer a cumulative summary of their narrative portraits. The Narrative Portraits of Immigrant Women Learning English in the USA Tina: “You Have a Higher Status When You Speak English” Tina’s Demographics and Immigration Background Tina, a 32-year-old woman, was born and raised in Chile. She married her husband at the age of 28 in Chile. Tina and her husband Marcos, a mining engineer, had a 3-year-old daughter born in Chile. At the time of our interview, Tina and Marcos and their daughter had immigrated from Chile to the USA. They and had been living in the 85 USA for one and a half years. Marcus had been promoted into a senior position that required him to be in the USA: "My husband work in the mine, so they had a raise last year [promotion], and they offered him the position [this position required him to relocate to the USA]." Tina's narrative positioned her husband (and her family) within a privileged status of getting high skilled employment in the USA. Tina saw the advantage of having this privilege for herself since she planned to use it to pursue her desired goal of learning English and advancing her professional career. She stated: "He asked me if I was happy with that and I said ok, let's go! I can improve my English and study" (Tina Interview, May 20, 2018). Here, Tina's aspiration to position herself as a student and an English language learner spoke to her awareness of what was privileged capital in the USA and led her to agentively plan to empower herself within the USA. Her agency involved pushing herself to acquire the knowledge and linguistic capitals needed to thrive in her new environment. Darvin and Norton (2015) and Peirce (1995) argued that when investing in a second language, the learner can acquire material (such as money) and symbolic gains (such as status) and thus increase his/her cultural capital. This is, at the same time, an investment in his/her own identities. Tina's agency, as reflected in her goals and desire to better her English and study in the USA, can be traced to her identities and privileged status back in Chile as a professional engineer who could communicate in English. In Chile, Tina had a bachelor's degree in engineering and worked for Conama and Codelco companies, governmentowned copper companies. She was the chief in improvement and maintenance and supervised 22 workers. Tina positively correlated her status as a chief officer in her profession to her ability to speak English in a Spanish-speaking country. 86 I was an improvement maintenance chief. I had 22 people [under supervision] …In Chile, it is important to know English for being better at work. You can’t be in [top] management if you don’t know English. English helps me at the work …I didn’t have to use it but they knew that I can speak English so they put me in a better position than the others that did not speak English. Even if you don’t have to speak English at work, it helps you. (Tina Interview, May 20, 2018) Tina, in the above excerpt, identified as an English language speaker in her company and enjoyed certain privileges, which included being placed in a higher position than her peers. Here, Tina unveiled her internalized disposition towards English as a powerful language that provided her access to economic and social capital. Tina's ideologies about English as a powerful tool for social advancement were laced through her narrative on why she wanted to improve her English in the USA. I think that you have a better status if you speak English. I think it is because when you know English, people think you have more money…or you travel to some country… so they look at you differently, and they think you have a better status than the others. (Tina Interview, May 20, 2018) Through the above excerpt, Tina provided significant evidence that she was very much aware of the cultural capital that the English language afforded and the discourses around English, even within her Spanish-speaking communities. This narrative unpacks why Tina invested in specific Discourse communities to learn English. Tina perceived speaking English and advancing her career in the USA as a worthwhile gain based on her experience at her workplace in Chile and a desire to invest in the discursive identities of a wealthy, well-traveled elite member of her community. Her neoliberal ideology that when “you know English people think you have money or you have traveled” aligned with a higher status identity that she attained in Chile. She sought to maintain this status in the USA by continuing to learn English and develop her career skills even after her move to the USA. Tine understood that to better position herself in the USA and to reap 87 similar benefits of the linguistic and economic capital she had in Chile, she had to hone her English language and career skills. When we met for our first interview, Tina, who previously had a bachelor's degree in Engineering from Pontificia Universidad Catholica de Chile, was pursuing an online master's degree in Business Communication at Louisiana State University in the USA. She and was also enrolled in an adult ESL program organized by the United Methodist Church in Arizona. In the following quote, Tina explains that her reason for pursuing a master's degree in Business communication was to learn the English version of her skill set as an industrial engineer. I am taking business masters and almost all the subjects that I am taking, I already took them in Chile so I already know that in Spanish not in English. So, I am learning the things that I have the knowledge now in English and try to improve my English. (Tina Interview, May 20, 2018) Tina was purposefully positioning herself as a transnational and a bilingual professional and expanding on her agentic resources to communicate and work effectively across her linguistically varied professional Discourse communities. She evidenced this by re-taking business classes that she had already taken in Spanish. Here, Tina reinforced her agentic act of learning English as contextualized and highlighted the linguistic repertoires that could serve the right purpose within the right space. Tina's identity was not fixed but was a process of becoming in which she straddled bilingual Discourse communities to practice selected identities that were situated. Tina's investment in learning English can be better understood as continuously spanning from her history of learning and using English in her home country of Chile, in her travel to New Zealand and then to her host country, the USA. Kanno and Norton (2003) argue that humans are capable of connecting with communities beyond their local 88 and their immediate context. Investment in such 'imagined' communities strongly influences identity construction and engagement in learning. Tina's desire and aspirations to be an English language speaker triggered her connection to various English-speaking spaces through formal and informal school settings and are discussed below. Tina’s English Learning Experiences Tina’s English Learning Experiences in Chile and New Zealand Tina was highly invested in learning English in Chile. This was evident in how she pursued the best opportunities to hone her skills in English. For example, although public schools in her country provided basic English to students, Tina enrolled in a private English school from seventh grade until high school: "In my country, private schools are better than public schools, so I went to an English private school… I started in second grade, and I had ten hours of English per week" (Tina Interview, May 20, 2018). In this private English school Discourse community, Tina was exposed to teachers who were native speakers of English: "The foreign teachers didn't speak Spanish very well, so they start class with English and finish speaking English. That helps you because you have to be concentrated on English" (Tina Interview, May 20, 2018). Here, the understanding is that Tina wanted a total immersion into the English language, and her monolingual English teachers allowed her to engage in English fully. Tina described her English literacy experience in the private school as based on speaking activities. For example, they had to speak parts of the Lord's prayer into a microphone every morning and speak English during drama nights at school. 89 …We had to pray in English, all the school together. We will say our father and you have to turn the microphone back and let other people continue. And we once a year had to do theater or sing or a play scene. I remember I had to do the last chapter of Friends, the television show. We had to do a chapter where Monica gets married and I was Monica (laughs) and I had to learn the script and that was fun. (Tina Interview, May 20, 2018) Tina's private school in the above narrative allowed her to practice speaking by engaging her in daily routines in English, such as praying in the mornings and also connecting her to expressing herself in English through drama. Through these practices, Tina was exposed to the day-to-day uses of English that made her learning experience engaging and fun. Tina's desire to establish her English-speaking identities by engaging in such real practices of using English in daily life drove her to travel outside Chile after her university education to experience life in an English-speaking country such as New Zealand. So, after I finished my degree, I went to New Zealand to practice my English, to improve it because I thought it was important. So, I stayed with a New Zealand mum with her father…Then I went to English classes. We had to speak all day in English [at home and in school]. (Tina Interview, May 20, 2018) This narrative depicted that Tina was immersed in the English language in New Zealand since she stayed with a New Zealand family who communicated with her in English and got English only instruction at school. Through these practices, Tina had daily exposure to English, which helped her train herself to identify herself as a fluent English speaker. Tina's experience with learning English and her desire to improve her English became deepened and meaningful once she moved with her family into the USA. Tina's dream to be a fluent English speaker was fulfilled when her husband Marcos was promoted and transferred to the USA, which is predominantly an English-speaking country. 90 Tina’s English Learning Experience in the USA "I think that if I am here, [in the USA], I have to take the opportunity that life has given me, so I always try to learn more [more English]" (Tina Interview, June 20, 2018). Within the USA, Tina saw an endless and fertile space to improve and expand on her earlier goals of learning English and her agency to accrue the needed capital in her new environment. Tina described her desired expectations for learning English in the USA: "I want to be able to talk without the pause that I make when I am talking, and when I speak, I do not want to say after I speak, "oh, I did wrong!" (Tina Interview, June 20, 2018). Tina, through this statement, agentively perceived fluency and accuracy in English as a skill and capital she desired to attain. Tina recognized herself as not yet proficient and accurate in speaking English even though she had been learning English since her elementary school days and had also traveled to New Zealand to learn English further. Tina's perception of her English-speaking ability was better understood through her narrative about her daily experiences with English in the USA. Tina described her daily experiences with English in the USA as exhausting sometimes and involving constant struggles with vocabulary. For example, Tina describes her Walmart experience depicting her struggle with the right use of precise vocabulary. I remember my skewer problem. I went to Walmart to buy a skewer, now I know that is the name. So, I didn’t know the name [skewer] before and I asked the guy [at Walmart] if he knew where I could get a wooden stick? He watched me like: “What? and I said, wooden stick. I started with my arms [gesturing with arms] to try to do a tree. He looked at me and said: good as in good job? And I said: no! I said, like a toothpick but bigger. And he asked: What do you need that for? I said, for a barbecue. Oh! you want a skewer! he said”. It was so embarrassing and I said oh my God! I can’t do this anymore… I will never forget that: How to write a skewer; how to pronounce a skewer. I will always remember that. (Tina Interview, June 20, 2018) 91 Tina, through the above narrative, was struggling with unfamiliar vocabulary and had difficulties using the right words to express herself even though she had an idea of what she wanted at the Walmart supermarket precisely. After her unplanned charade with the Walmart attendant in figuring out the word 'skewer,' Tina became more sensitive about her need to use the right words at the right time either through writing or pronunciation. Tina's sense of belonging to the English-speaking Discourse community within the USA was shaken when she realized that she did not have the vocabulary to be recognized as a member of an English-speaking Discourse community. She saw the need to invest in Discourse communities that equipped her with the linguistic repertoire that helped her position herself as a 'good American English speaker.' Her selection and investment in various Discourse communities to learn English were part of her agency to overcome the barriers that impeded her from positioning herself as a good English language speaker. This will be discussed in the subsequent section. In this section, Tina's narratives on her demographic and immigration background were populated with histories and experiences of English about the places she had been, the spaces she had occupied or sought to occupy and her ideologies about English. Tina's goals, desires, and agency performed about learning English will help us appreciate how and why she invested in Discourse communities outside her USA ESL classroom to learn more English. This is discussed in the next section. 92 The Discourse Communities Using English Outside the ESL Classroom Accessed by Tina in the USA In this section, I offer a portrait of the various English Discourse communities that Tina engaged with outside the ESL classroom. I will highlight the multiliteracies repertoire that she used as tools to mediate her engagement within her selected Discourse communities. Her enactment of multiple identities and the performance of agency with these tools within her Discourse communities will also be unpacked. Tina's Discourse communities varied from face to face to online learning spaces. In her face-to-face learning spaces, Tina interacted with native English speakers in bilingual settings. This included communications with native speakers who could speak Spanish, teaching Spanish to native English speakers with the use of both English and Spanish, and interactions and activities in English and Spanish within her family. Her online learning spaces included her professional Discourse communities and her mediabased Discourse communities through popular television shows such as "Gilmore Girls" and "Greys' Anatomy." Some of Tina's online learning spaces were 'imagined.' I use the term 'imagined' to capture Tina's imaginings of herself as an English language learner through reproducing texts similar to that of the English Discourse communities (writing, listening, speaking and reading in English) through the affordances of technologies such as the internet, television, and phones. The concept of 'imagined community' (Anderson, 1983) is applied to Tina's' investment in learning English through the media. Within media-based English learning Discourse communities, Tina had no contact with other people who used media-based tools to learn English and may never know or meet them. Yet the image of communion in practices of learning English through media-based tools 93 such as movies, television series, and phone applications evoked the notion of a Discourse community. The concept of imagined communities, though applied to nation/states, helped explain the lack of communication or contact between English language learners within the media-based Discourse community. Technological advances, which are also part of the multiliteracies repertoires in the last 2 decades, have had a significant impact on what is possible to imagine and do with learning a language. Tina’s English Interactions with Peer Native SpanishSpeakers in Bilingual Discourse Communities Tina inserted herself within her peer Spanish speakers, who were also fluent speakers of English. Her aim for inserting herself in this Discourse community was to get feedback from them in terms of the correct forms of speaking English. She explained: "Mimi's [daughter] teacher…she now speaks English, but she was raised in a Spanish family, a Mexican one. I always told her: "please, when I make mistakes tell me that it is not like that. You have to say it the other way" (Tina Interview, June 20, 2018). Here, Tina was using her cultural background as a Spanish woman to strike acquaintance with another Spanish speaking woman who was fluent in English to learn English. Here, Tina's identity as a Spanish speaker and a Chilean woman learning English positioned her in a dual and transnational capacity to speak Spanish and also receive correct forms of English that she needed to thrive in her new English dominant speaking community. Tina's struggle with fluently speaking English was further complicated with her experiences within this Discourse community through the kind of literacy practices that she encountered with her peers. First, they never provided her with the feedback she 94 needed to speak English confidently: Mimi's teacher never did [provide feedback] … She is so polite to me, but I need to learn" (Tina Interview, June 20, 2018). Tina, through this statement, perceived that Mimi's teacher had been brought up as a Mexican. She valued respect for others and peers within the family and was having difficulties correcting her or providing antagonistic feedback. This exemplified Gee's narrative in 'the Discourse of law school' where Gee (2012) highlighted the case of a Chicana student who had been socialized to be respectful to people in authority and thus had difficulties engaging in antagonistic debates with law professors. Tina's experience with her peer also justified Gee's argument that our actions, values, and thoughts within specific Discourse communities can compromise in certain contexts or conflicts in others. Their identities as Spanish speaking women and English language speakers conflated at the level of exchanging ideas on the correct usage of English. Also, Tina's English literacy experiences with Spanish English bilingual speakers often involved code-mixing in the form of Spanglish. Code-mixing is the mixing of words or phrases of two or more languages in a speech concurrently. Spanglish is neither English nor Spanish but a mixture of both languages. She states, I know they do that [speaking Spanglish with her] with the best intention but that doesn’t work because they speak something in English and Spanish and I say:” oh! What did you say? I don’t understand…is like at the same time she speaks in English and Spanish. I don’t like that! (Tina Interview, June 20, 2018) Here, Tina illustrated her dislike for code-mixing English and Spanish together. Tina probably perceived Spanglish as not the linguistic capital that was beneficial in her dominant English habitus and also to achieve her goals of speaking English fluently. She, therefore, agentively dissociated herself from the literacy practices that were Spanglish. She was instead geared towards correct forms of spoken English, which she never got 95 from speaking with the native English speakers she encountered. Tina did not appreciate the practice of speaking Spanglish with Spanish speakers of English and, therefore, agentively positioned herself to speak only Spanish with her Spanish speaking peers. For example, Tina described moments in her English learning trajectory when she intentionally avoided speaking English in front of Spanish speakers. This move was not only to prevent speaking Spanglish but was also her agency to avoid the shame of making mistakes while speaking English with them. She, therefore, positioned herself as a fluent Spanish speaker rather than an English language learner. She states, When people speak Spanish, and I have to speak in English with them, I am so embarrassed to speak in English. But when I have to speak English to people that speak only English, it is less embarrassing for me... I don’t speak English too much around Spanish speakers. I don’t want them to make fun of me. I am more comfortable talking in English with English speakers than Spanish speakers. (Tina Interview, July 20, 2018) Tina's above excerpt depicts a strategic use of English and Spanish whenever she was situated in English and Spanish speaking Discourse communities. Tina agentively asserted herself as a fluent Spanish speaker rather than an English language learner among Spanish speakers. She tapped into the linguistic-cultural capital of Spanish as a member of the Spanish Discourse community to avoid the shame of not speaking good English. Tina, however, identified herself as an English language learner when she was with native English speakers. She did this to be recognized as seeking entry into the English Discourse community. Here, language became the site of struggle and a place where Tina's identities were constructed. Tina, however, explained that this struggling sometimes deprived her of the opportunity to learn more English: "I don't know, but sometimes this affects my English learning. When I have a chance to speak or to talk to someone in English, and there is a Spanish speaker with me, I won't take that 96 opportunity, and I will keep quiet" (Tina Interview, July 20, 2018). This situation reiterates the power and agency embedded in language learning and how this can either restrict or give access to particular languages and literacy practices. In Tina's case, her ability to express herself in English was restrictive when she was with her Spanish speaking friends. Place and environment become useful elements in learning English. Tina, however, identified herself as an English language learner when she was with native English speakers. She did this to be recognized as seeking entry into the English Discourse community and also open up the opportunity for all to receive all the resources she needed from the native English language speakers. Tina’s English Interactions with Native English Speakers in Bilingual Discourse Communities Tina showed a commitment to learning English by investing in a Discourse community in which she positioned herself as a Spanish teacher to native English speakers. Tina perceived her identity as a fluent native Spanish speaker as a leverage to achieve her desired goal of improving her English language. This is evidenced in her use of Spanish and English, as she describes her instructional methodology. I am teaching Spanish but my people only speak English. So, I am teaching Spanish, with English (laughs). I have to speak English because they don’t understand Spanish and they are learning basic Spanish so I have to tell them the word in English. If I say: “Hola, como estas? I have to tell them hi, how are you?” and they can understand what I am asking in Spanish. I ask them about their weekend in Spanish and then in English. (Tina Interview, July 20, 2018) Tina, in the narrative above, is engaged in code-switching as she used English at one point and switched to Spanish at another to make her lessons comprehensible to her native English speakers. By using English in her Spanish class, teaching Spanish had 97 English learning benefits for Tina. She explained: "It [teaching Spanish to native English speakers] works for me too because I have to speak in English …I learn in English to tell them how to speak Spanish…so it was a win-win" (Tina Interview, July 20, 2018). Tina's above code-switching of Spanish and English within her Spanish class was her form of agency in maintaining her Spanish speaking identity and improving upon her English learning skills. These languages, therefore, served as tools that helped her navigate her Spanish identity as well as her identity as an English language learner. Tina did not only code switch English and Spanish in her bilingual Discourse community. She also used texts in Spanish and English in different modalities. This included audio texts in the form of Spanish songs. Tina described how she used these as tools for meaning-making in her class: "The last time, I played them a Spanish song, and asked: 'What do you think is the name of the song and what words did you recognize.' Then I have to tell them in English what the song means" (Tina Interview, July 20, 2018). Through this practice, Tina code switched to make her lessons meaningful and, at the same time, learn English. Also, as Tina taught native English speakers Spanish, she strategically eavesdropped on their conversations to acquire new vocabulary. She stated: "When they speak between them or among them, I try to listen to what they are talking about for new words and meanings" (Tina Interview, July 20, 2018). Tina's investment in learning English drove her to be attentive to conversations in English and to use the slightest opportunity to learn English from native English speakers. Her exchange of Spanish teaching services to native English speakers became a form of reciprocal languaging because it involved her giving her knowledge in Spanish and receiving knowledge in 98 English from English speakers. Tina explained how teaching Spanish to native English speakers helped her improve her English learning: "I think it is helping me to improve myself confidence that I can speak in English and I can speak faster because I don't think too much of what I am saying, I am just saying it. I have improved [in speaking English] since I arrived [in the USA]" (Tina Interview, July 20, 2018). Here, Tina alluded to the usefulness of her multiliteracies repertoires, which were bilingual as affording her fluency in her desired language, which is English. Tina's engagement with multiliteracies repertoires in this bilingual Discourse community, apart from helping her to improve her English, also enabled her to enact her various linguistic identities. This involved negotiating identities as a fluent Spanish speaker and English language learner. Her linguistic identities were not steeped in one Discourse community but two interacting Discourse communities, namely English and Spanish Discourse communities. In the Spanish Discourse community, Tina positioned herself as a teacher, and in the English Discourse community, she positioned herself as a learner. English and Spanish worked interchangeably as Tina's mediating tools for negotiating identity and meaning. Tina's investment in this bilingual Discourse community can be described as worthwhile since it tapped into her desired goal of acquiring the linguistic skill and capital of speaking fluently in English. Another bilingual Discourse community in which Tina learned English could be located within her bilingual family Discourse community. This Discourse community revolved around her interactions in English with her husband and daughter. 99 Tina’s Use of English Within Her Bilingual Family Discourse Community Born and raised in Chile, and married to a Spanish speaking man, Spanish was the commonly used language in Tina's family. English, however, bled through conversations and activities that Tina engaged with within her Spanish speaking family. Tina was continually organizing and reorganizing her sense of identity within her family as a native Spanish speaker, mother, and an English language learner. This played out in her language choices around her daughter and her ideologies behind such choices. Tina saw the capital of bilingualism as needed for her growing daughter, whose Chilean background required her to speak some Spanish. She explained: "I want her to be able to speak with her grandparents back in Chile" (Tina Interview, July 20, 2018). Here, Tina was aware of the need for her daughter to have the cultural capital required to integrate into her extended family in Chile. She needed to stay connected to family, and the Spanish language was the tool of connection between her daughter and her parents. Tina also saw fluency in English as an equally important skill her daughter needed to navigate her English-speaking society. Hence, she enrolled her in an English kindergarten and read to her in English and Spanish: "I read some books to her in English and Spanish. Sometimes she [daughter] wants the English book, so I read in English, and sometimes she wants the Spanish book, so we try in Spanish" (Tina Interview, July 20, 2018). Through this bilingual book reading practice, Tina was enacting a bilingual identity and handing down to her daughter a bilingual identity. This identity was important for her cultural as well as economic sustenance. Spanish created a link to her family, while English primed her to thrive in her dominant English society. 100 Tina also acknowledged that being a mother created spaces that required her to use English, pushing her to learn more English. I think it is more like the environment that she [Mimi] inserts in that helps me learn English more. I have to talk to her teacher, and I have to talk to her doctor, and I have to get her flu shot… I learn how to speak about that in English. (Tina Interview, May 20, 2018) In the above excerpt, Tina drew attention to how her gendered identity as a mother pushed her to invest in learning English. She engaged in discourses and activities surrounding motherhood, such as taking her daughter to a school where she communicated in English with her teacher (sometimes in Spanglish, which she hated as discussed previously). She also had to speak in English as she took her daughter to the hospital for checkups and updates on her wellness. These discourses and activities were all embedded in the English language, and she had to learn what to say in all those contexts. Within her bilingual family Discourse community, Tina's goal was to make choices that would enable her daughter to maintain her Spanish language, given her Chilean background, and to acquire English in her USA English speaking Discourse community. Her choices were fluid and context-specific. For example, Tina spoke only Spanish with her daughter at home. Her use of English in the house was only through reading English books to her. Although Tina read books in English to her daughter at home, she was very cautious about speaking English to her and particularly warned her husband, who is also a non-native speaker of English, to avoid speaking English. In the house, we speak Spanish but he [husband] tries to speak in English to Mimi and I try to say: “No! Our English, our pronunciation is different so please speak Spanish and let the others [native English speakers at the daycare] speak English with her. (Tina Interview, May 20, 2018) 101 Tina, in this excerpt, agentively preferred a native-like English accent for her daughter by stopping her husband from speaking English to her daughter in the house. In her perspective, her accent, as well as that of her husband, were not good enough or did not carry the material worth or capital that would be beneficial to their daughter. In Tina's perspective, pronunciations of words and the correct usage of English was very important (as evidenced in her agency around Spanglish and her response to her experience at Walmart with the skewer). The use of language in different contexts framed Tina's choice of linguistic tools and agency. Tina, apart from her goal of improving her English, also desired to expand her career through further studies in Business communication. Her aspirations to belong to the Business communication Discourse community interconnected with her English language learning. Tina’s Use of English Within the Professional Discourse Community Tina had the goals of improving her English and advancing her career studies, so she was pursuing an online master's degree in Business Communication at Louisiana State University in the USA at the time of our first interview. She explained that her reason for pursuing this degree was to learn the English version of her skill set as an industrial engineer. Here, Tina repositions herself from an English language learner to a professional graduate student. Her decision to pursue a degree in English was her agentic way of rearticulating herself as a professional woman in the USA. Her investment in this professional Discourse community had the potential to open up opportunities for symbolic as well as material capital for her to thrive in her new environment. On top of 102 these benefits, Tina's daily activities within the Business Communication Discourse community pushed her to learn English further. For example, from Monday to Friday, Tina accessed online course activities, which involved writing tests, reading, emailing, and blogging with English professors and students. The courses I go from Monday to Friday. Every day, I study for about 4 hours. I have to write essays [in English], I have to write tests [in English], I have to watch a video and use the Business Rosetta stone application that helps with my pronunciation, and also help me with vocabulary. I have professors and other students and we have a blog that we chat in English. It’s like…. I have to think all day in English when I am studying. They [activities in business communication program] are improving my English in vocabulary, they are improving my English in the writing skills, they improve my English in my reading skills. I can read faster. (Tina Interview, July 20, 2018) In Tina's narrative, she used a lot of visual tools, such as the videos and audios in the Rosetta stone application, to improve her pronunciation. She also engaged in written forms of texts with her professors and her classmates online. Thus, in the Business Communication Discourse community, Tina was acquiring knowledge in Business Communication, but she was also honing her English skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. She agentively was working towards her goals of improving her English and identifying as a professional woman within the USA. Tina, however, found learning English within the Business Discourse community too intense for her liking: "The other day, for example, I sent one homework, and they put me on the 90% because I put 'people meets' 'instead of people meet' and I said ah! …I don't want to speak English anymore. I hate English!" (Tina Interview, July 20, 2018). Here, the intensity of the English activities within the Business Communication Discourse community drained Tina of her energy and enthusiasm to learn English. It was too restrictive to her as she was marked down for making grammatical mistakes within 103 the Business communication Discourse community. Tina wanted a less stressful way of learning English. She, therefore, found the media-based Discourse community a complementing learning space to advance her English learning. Tina’s Media-Based Discourse Communities That Used English The media-based Discourse community is not an actual traditional interaction space but rather a kind of virtual and imagined space afforded by technology that uses media-based communication tools and products in English learning. The term media refers to both the mediums of communication (radio, recorded music, internet, television, print, film, video) as well as the products or texts of these mediums (television shows and film productions, video games, web sites). Within this imagined Discourse community, Tina relied heavily on media as multiliteracies repertoires that mediated her English learning in a fun and relaxed way and improved her English vocabulary and listening skills. Tina's activities within the media-based Discourse community included watching television series such as Grey's Anatomy, Gilmore Girls, Criminal Minds, Law and Order, and teenage movies. I try to watch some English television so I can have the word and vocabulary improvement… I am trying to make that connection. The movies and series I watch them for fun so... I can just change the subtitle to Spanish. But in the program [Business program], I can’t do that… (Tina Interview, July 20, 2018) Tina, in the above statement, describes the flexibility in learning English through the media- based Discourse community. She could get a lot of English vocabulary from watching English movies, and she could understand Spanish by using the Spanish subtitles. Once again, Tina's bilingual identity was utilized to access English language learning as she engaged in a kind of code-switching through the use of subtitles. This act 104 of code-switching could be understood as instantiations of her identities as a bilingual. Tina also evidenced an act of agency by choosing movies to learn English within the media-based Discourse community. She described picking teenage and children's movies that she could readily understand as an English language learner. I keep movies like teenage or children movies because they are easy to understand than the ones for grownups It helps me a lot. I want to hear English and try to understand what they are saying. I know I can’t understand the older ones. (Tina Interview, May 20, 2018) In this excerpt, Tina is engaging with movies that were not dense in content and were easy for her to understand. She was avoiding the stress associated with difficult content to avoid burning out her desire to learn English as happened within her Business communication Discourse community. Here, Tina was being exposed to the everyday use of English that was nonstandard and portrayed real-life usage of English language. At the same time, Tina's identity as a mother informed her choice of movies. She explained: "Every day, Mimi comes from school at four and is allowed to watch television until 6 pm. So those 2 hours she is watching television in English in cartoons and I will hear and watch them, learning" (Tina Interview, July 20, 2018). Through children's television, Tina is fulfilling a dual negotiation of responsibility and identities as a mother and an English language learner. Tina, within the media-based Discourse community, not only had the flexibility to select her movies and television shows. She also had the affordance of learning English throughout the day from the time she woke up in the morning, through her cooking and gyming activities to the time she put her daughter to bed: ...when I have a gym session, I am running or I am walking, I am always listening and watching something on my telephone. If I am walking, I am listening to music in English, if I am cooking, I put Master Chef or the Voice or something in 105 English. When I go to put Emma into the bed, I stay with her and I put my earplugs and I listen. I listen to Gilmore girls… like I can’t watch because I am making Emma go to bed, so I just hear them. (Tina Interview, June 20, 2018) Here, Tina's English learning practices expanded throughout the day and were limitless, ranging from music, television shows and movies, to cooking shows. She could listen or watch based on English programs as she went about her household routines. Through these activities, Tina saw an improvement in her English learning: "I think I am learning more vocabulary, and my listening is improving" (Tina Interview, July 20, 2018). This means that the media-based Discourse community not only provided a fun way for Tina to learn English. It also helped her improve her vocabulary and listening skills in everyday English. English learning could, therefore, be fun and productive at the same time through the use of a media-based Discourse community. The media-based Discourse community, through the use of multiliteracies, afforded Tina the flexibility to learn English almost everywhere and anytime and perform her gendered roles and identities as a mother and a home keeper. The multiple languages (Spanish, English), the technologies (phone, earplugs, internet), the numerous textual modalities (audio, visual) all worked together to provide a flexible learning environment for Tina that was also fun and entertaining and sustaining her investment in English literacy. Tina’s Investment in Learning English Tina's narrative on her English learning experiences through her engagement in various Discourse communities suggested that her investment in learning English was closely connected to her identities as a mother and her aspirations to be identified as a 106 professional worker. The media-based Discourse communities afforded her flexible tools to invest in learning English anywhere at any time continually. Paradoxical to research that identified women's gendered identities as gatekeeping them from learning English (Rockhill, 1983), Tina's identity as a mother opened up opportunities for her to be exposed to English as she communicated with her daughter's teachers and doctors in English and engaged in English literacy practices such as reading English books to her daughter and watching English cartoons and movies with her. Through these activities, Tina positioned herself as an English language learner as well as a mother. This reiterated Studies by Gordon (2004), Kouritzin (2000) Pavlenko (2005), and Warriner (2004) argued that immigrant women were able to use their linguistic and cultural awareness creatively to deal with the everyday challenges of living in a new language. The gendering of household responsibilities became an advantage and a form of agency for Tina. Her internalized disposition towards English fueled her aspiration to be identified as a professional. English, as a dominant language, gave her access to economic and social worth. Tina's ideologies about English were based on her work experience in Chile as a higher-paid employee because of her ability to communicate in English. The English language served as a conduit to her future identity as a professional who could communicate effectively in the English language. Tina, therefore, exercised agency as she chose what she perceived as beneficial to her existing or future identities that were bilingual and professional. She resisted practices that did not help her to achieve her goals. Tina's daily engagement within the media-based Discourse communities also 107 leveraged her investment in learning English as these media-based Discourse communities were embedded in multiliteracies and afforded her the flexibility to learn English anytime throughout her day and sustained her learning of English. Tina's investment in learning English had an intense relationship with her identity as a mother who was nurturing a bilingual daughter, and a graduate student who aspired to be identified as a professional working with the cumulative symbolic and material capital to thrive in her new environment. Her agency and identities also revolved around her choice of tools that were multiliteracies. Tina's narratives on her English learning experiences collectively painted a picture of the complex interplay between her identities, her forms of agency, and her commitment to learning English. Cinthy: “I Feel Better to Go Outside to the World and Try and Live Some New Experiences Like Study in College” Cinthy’s Demographics and Immigration Background Cinthy, a 34-year-old woman, was born in Trujillo in the northern part of Peru. Cinthy and her husband Javier, a mining engineer, had 3 daughters who were born in Peru. At the time of our first interview, Cinthy, Javier, and their 3 daughters had immigrated from Peru to the USA for 1 1/2 years. Javier had been promoted, and as part of his promotion, he was required to work in the USA as an expatriate in the USA branch of his company: "We are here…. because my husband was promoted to work here [USA] (Cinthy Interview, May 30, 2018). In this excerpt, Cinthy revealed her husband's privileged position as a specialized skilled person who carried the knowledge capital needed in their new environment. Thus, Javier's new status as an expatriate engineer in 108 the USA positioned Cinthy and her daughters in a privileged position. They were bound to enjoy whatever opportunities that came with Javier's new position. Javier's promotion, however, came at a price, as it challenged Cinthy significantly in terms of her career. Cinthy could not work in the USA because she was on her husband's company H4 Visa. The only privilege she had with that Visa was enrolling in school or volunteering her services to the community without any form of remuneration. Here [in the USA] am not working. I can only study. I don’t have special permission for me to work here. I am on the company [husband’s company] H4 Visa … and I am taking advantage of that. One of my goals is to study MBA [Master’s in Business Administration]. (Cinthy Interview, May 30, 2018) Cinthy, in this excerpt, agentively positioned herself as a student in response to her given identity as a nonworker within the USA. Cinthy saw education as the gateway to gain entrance into the professional Discourse community within the USA. She needed to reposition herself to be identified as a professional woman in the USA. She was optimistic that learning English could help her achieve her goal: "I need to write English since the whole school experience will be in English" (Cinthy Interview, May 30, 2018). Here, Cinthy was aware of English's significance in her preparation to reposition herself as a career woman through studying an MBA. She was also aware that English could help her communicate efficiently in her future career: "I am trying to understand new English words…1 will like to work someday here [USA]. I am hoping (voice breaking) that is possible. I will like to communicate, and I will like to work here" (Cinthy Interview, May 30, 2018). Here, Cinthy was highly motivated to invest in learning English because she could acquire the symbolic gain as a professional woman and also increase her cultural capital, which was, at the same time, an investment in her identities. Cinthy's agency, as reflected in her goals and desire to better her English and 109 study in the USA, can be traced to her identities back in Peru as a career woman, a wife, and a mother. She identified herself as an industrial engineer in a steel company. Also, She described working in the logistics and supply chain department for various companies, including Chrysler, Mercedes, Jeep, and Dodge car companies as chief of logistics for the southern part of Peru (Arequipa, Cusco, Ntartna areas). I got a job in Chimbote in a factory that produced steel. I worked there for about 8 years. There I met with my husband (laughs) and then we had my first 2 daughters the older one was born in Chimbote, the second was born in Trujillo and then when we moved to Arequipa, the last one was born there in Arequipa… I worked in a company that sold Chrysler group, Chrysler cars and Mercedes Benz cars, Jeep and Dodge. I was in charge of logistics. I was the logistics chief for southern Peru. (Cinthy Interview, May 30, 2018) In the above excerpts, Cinthy positioned herself as an upper-class woman who was independent and took her family matters seriously. She met her husband when she was a career woman in a steel company and had her children while working. Cinthy positioned herself as an empowered woman who had every reason not to settle for the nonworking identity that she had been positioned within the USA context. Her agency to work as an independent woman in the USA was evident in her narrative on her encounter with a woman at the social security office upon her arrival in the USA. I arrived here in December, and I went to the social security administration. I wanted to get my social security number, and the lady there asked me: "Why do you need a social security number? Your husband works at the mine, and you don't need to work". I didn't answer her, but I will love to tell her: "it is not your business; it is my business" (Cinthy Interview, May 30, 2018). Cinthy's business was to be an independent worker, mother, and wife. Cinthy's agency to study and learn English to have a better position in the USA was laced through her narratives on her previous English learning experiences in Peru. Most companies consider employees as more valuable in terms of being capable, for instance, to negotiate with foreign companies where most of them make business by speaking in English. Through English, a professional is valued as 110 more qualified. Knowing how to speak English gave me extra points in my qualifications to be promoted in my job. (Cinthy Interview, May 30, 2018) Cinthy, in the above excerpt, identified herself as enjoying the privilege of an extra point for promotion in her job because she could speak English. Here, Cinthy unveiled her internalized disposition towards English as a powerful language that provided her with a higher status. Cinthy, through the above excerpt, provided significant evidence that she was very much aware of the cultural capital that the English language afforded and the discourses around English even within her Spanish speaking communities. Cinthy perceived a worthwhile gain in learning more English and studying to advance her career in the USA based on her identities as a career woman who was in a top management position and could speak English. To reposition herself in the USA as a career woman just as she was in Peru, Cinthy deemed it essential to hone her English language and career skills. During our first interview for this study, Cinthy had already earned an online master's degree in Supply and Chain management and was enrolled in another online master's program in MBA at Michigan University. She had also enrolled in college-level English courses at the Eastern Arizona College even though she attended adult ESL classes at the United Methodist Church. Cinthy's investment in learning English can also be better understood as continuously spanning from her history of learning and using English in her home town Peru and her host country [USA]. Cinthy’s English Learning Experiences Cinthy’s English Learning Experiences in Peru Cinthy's English learning in Peru was greatly influenced by her parents, who perceived multilingualism as a needed tool for success in life. Specifically, they insisted 111 on the need for her to learn English because they were ideologically geared towards English as the language of opportunities for jobs and a better future. Learning a second language? Oh no! Why me? That is what I thought when my parents told me that I had to study English as a second language because it would be important in my future life. But as I was only twelve years old, I did not understand my parents’ perspective because my mind was more concerned about spending time with friends, going to see the latest movie. Moreover, my mind still insisted on thinking: “if my native language is Spanish, why do I need to learn another language?” (Cinthy Interview, May 30, 2018) Cinthy's above narrative highlighted her initial perspective on language learning, which was purely monolingual and Spanish. Cinthy, at that time, positioned herself as a monolingual Spanish speaker. She saw Spanish as the language that opened up opportunities for her to socialize with her friends. She was yet to understand the importance of learning a language like English, unlike her parents. Cinthy was coaxed by her parents to enroll in an English institution outside the regular elementary and high school. "It was in an institute outside the school, and I started at the basic level until the intermediate level. I learned basic English nouns… some verbs" (Cinthy Interview, May 30, 2018). Here, Cinthy was exposed to basic English and was given English instruction from the basic to the intermediate. Cinthy continued learning English at the university level where she took English as a required course as part of her Engineering program "I had to take English courses the whole time in University because at the end we needed to take what was called the P80 test from the Cambridge University" (Cinthy Interview, May 30, 2018). Cinthy had begun to experience how English has been positioned as the language of education. Within her Spanish society, she had to write examinations in English as part of her Engineering course. She reported that her experience with learning English at the university level was 112 tedious due to the differences in the order of words between the Spanish and English sentence structure. She explained how she could not cope with her brain continually switching back and forth as she figured out the sentence orders in English. My process of understanding English was hard. Unlike Spanish, in English you must change the order of some words, so the sentence makes sense. It was like my brain resisted thinking in a reverse mode to think in English. I felt like I had to twist my thoughts to build a correct grammatical sentence. For example, in Spanish it is correct to say: “she has a car new”, but in English, the correct way is “she has a new car”; the adjective goes first then the noun. I clearly remember my first English class at the university where I had to learn how to write the university name. In Spanish, the word sequence would be: “University Private from the North”, but in English, it is: “Northern Private University—where North goes first and university goes at the end. (Cinthy Interview, June 25, 2018) In the above narrative, Cinthy was learning the discourse in her English Discourse community, which also happened to be her secondary Discourse. She had been socialized into her Spanish primary Discourse and was having difficulties straddling both Spanish and English Discourses simultaneously. According to Gee (2012), our primary Discourses give us our initial and often enduring sense of self and sets the foundations of our culturally specific vernacular language. Our secondary Discourses sometimes conflict with primary Discourses (semantics, phonology, culturally specific markers) negatively or positively. Cinthy's primary Spanish Discourses negatively impacted her ability to structure correct sentences in English. She had to do reverse thinking to structure her sentences in English. Cinthy's efforts to attain fluency in English paid off after she graduated from college. She explained: "Although at first, I thought it would be a waste of time to learn English, time proved me otherwise…I had an extra point to be promoted in my job because of English" (Cinthy Interview, May 30, 2018). Here, Cinthy had become mindful of the economic capital and the numerous possibilities that English afforded English 113 speakers. Cinthy had begun to reap the benefits of learning English during her career time. English made her a valuable employee and enhanced her professional career. Cinthy's narrative unpacked how English could serve as a tool for accessing economic empowerment as well as social status as she earned extra points to be promoted in her job by learning to speak English. Cinthy's ideology and experience with English learning and her awareness of the benefits of speaking English pushed her to learn English in her dominant Spanish society and even continued to do so in the USA. Cinthy’s English Learning Experience in the USA In the USA, Cinthy discovered that her English learning experience in Peru did not adequately equip her to communicate effectively in English. She agentively avoided situations that portrayed her as not good at speaking English. I thought I knew enough English (laughs) but that is not so true because the English here [USA] is different. Everyday English words were so hard for me… It was frustrating because I know that I can speak in English but there were some words or some phrases that I didn’t know so I preferred to avoid situations that required lengthy conversations and only said hi, hello thank you, bye. (laughs). (Cinthy Interview, June 25, 2018) In the above narrative, Cinthy positioned herself as a nonfluent English language speaker to avoid lengthy conversations that could put her to shame since she had limited everyday English vocabulary. The resultant effect of her choice of agency was a limited opportunity to engage in conversations in English. Cinthy saw the need to invest in Discourse communities that helped her position herself as a fluent English speaker. This will be discussed in the following section. In this section, Cinthy's demographic and immigration background were populated with histories and experiences of English about the places she had been, the 114 spaces she occupied or sought to occupy and her neoliberal ideologies about English. Cinthy's background through her narrative (goals and desires, identities and agency performed about learning English) help us appreciate how and why she invested in Discourse communities outside the USA ESL classroom to learn more English. The Discourse Communities Using English Outside the ESL Classroom Accessed by Cinthy in the USA In this section, I offer a portrait of the various English Discourse communities that Cinthy engaged with outside the US ESL classroom. I will highlight the multiliteracies repertoires that she used as tools to mediate her engagement within her selected Discourse communities. Her enactment of multiple identities and her performance of agency with these tools within her Discourse communities will also be unpacked. Cinthy's Discourse communities included face-to-face and online interactions in English. Her face-to-face interactions in English included interactions with native English speakers, English church Discourse community, and her bilingual family Discourse community. Cinthy's online English learning spaces included her professional MBA Discourse community and her media-based Discourse community. Cinthy's media-based Discourse community was imagined English learning spaces that were media-based and included the use of English movies, music, and television programs. I use the term 'imagined' to capture Cinthy's imaginings of herself as an English language learner through reproducing texts similar to that of the English Discourse community (writing, listening, speaking and reading in English) through the affordances of technologies such as the internet, television, and phones within the media-based Discourse community. 115 Cinthy’s Use of English Within the Native English Discourse Community Cinthy's idea of practicing English with native English speakers was grounded in her observations of her daughters' progress with English since they immigrated to the USA. She states, They spend almost 7 hours at school with teachers, with friends who will speak only in English. That leads them to learn more. They are learning very well and they are here a little bit more than a year and a half…. They understand a lot. They also have learned obviously by playing with their friends [native English speakers]. (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018) Cinthy, in this narrative, perceived daily exposure and interaction with native English speakers as significant in learning English. She was impressed with the improvement in her daughters’ English and attributed it all to their exposure to English outside the house in schools and with friends. Cinthy's contact with native speakers was limited as compared to her daughters. Even though she was in college and had native speakers around her, Cinthy describes not being able to utilize the opportunity to practice her English for two reasons: her gendered responsibility as the housekeeper, and the negative feedback she got from some native speakers of English when she attempted to speak English with them. I go to college for 2 or 3 hours every day. As soon as I finish with my class, I have to come home and start to make cleaning and cooking (laughs) and maybe do the laundry. So, for me, I spend so little time with them [native speakers of English]. I think it is easier for children than for an adult to practice English with them [native speakers of English] Children have so much contact with them [native speakers] than me. (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018) Cinthy, in the above narrative, unpacks how her gendered responsibility as the keeper of the house limited the time she spent with native speakers and hence the time she practiced her English with them. She had to rush back home to do household chores as a 116 mother and a wife. She, therefore, concluded that her children had more opportunities to practice English with native speakers of English than herself. Cinthy, through her narrative, reiterated research findings that gendered roles served as gatekeepers for most women learning English (Kanno & Norton 2003; Rockhill, 1983). Cinthy was, however, agentic in reaching out to native speakers and utilized every little space and opportunity she could get to practice her English with them. She approached native speakers either in public areas or within her neighborhood to practice her English. One method that Cinthy sometimes used to practice her English was to speak to her neighbor, who was a native English speaker. Both of them had their children in the same school, and their children often played together. So, her daughters served as a conduit to opportunities to speak with her native English-speaking neighbor. She states, I have a neighbor who speaks only English and I suppose we understand each. We talk once a week because she has five children who also happen to be in the same school as my children and she is so busy. When we have the chance to talk, we talk about the kids and about what kind of food I have prepared because she loves Peruvian foods. She sometimes asks me about how to prepare some of the dishes even though she doesn’t like to cook. I usually share with her deserts like banana cake and also shredded chicken cooked with sauce. She also loved Peruvian chili. The advantage of speaking with her is that she only speaks English and when I am with her, I try to speak English fluently. You learn more English just when you talk with someone daily. I will like to speak more frequently to her (neighbor). Maybe that is not possible because mostly I am busy. (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018) Cinthy’s narrative in the above excerpt described how her interactions with her Englishspeaking neighbor helped her to speak and practice her English. She had to speak English fluently around her. Her interactions with her revolved around discourses on motherhood and household duties. They talked about their children and dishes, which were all part of their identities as mothers and women who had to take care of their families. Their conversations were, however, short-lived because both of them had less time outside their 117 household responsibilities to hold long conversations. Cinthy, apart from practicing her English with her native English-speaking neighbor, also tried to speak English outside her home in hospitals and her college. Her attempt to speak with native speakers of English did not always motivate her to practice her English. She states, There was this girl who worked at the hospital that I used to go to. I tried to explain something in English to her and she said: “No! I don’t understand you!” The way that she spoke to me was rude. She turned around and asked for someone who spoke Spanish to help me. That makes you feel bad right? I don’t know what her problem is (laughs). With people like this lady at the hospital, when I see that she is in the office and I need to speak with her, I try to go to another direction and look for the lady who speaks Spanish. Yea, I try to avoid her. (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018) In the above narrative, Cinthy agentively used Spanish to navigate hostile spaces around some native English speakers who only identified her as a non- English-speaking woman who needed help in navigating her space within the dominant English-speaking society. Her attempt to practice her English was misconstrued as a cry for language intervention and assistance. The woman at the hospital identified her as a Spanish speaker rather than a member of the English-speaking Discourse community. The insider and outsider perspectives within Discourse communities were evident in Cinthy's encounter with the woman who was gatekeeping her from using and practicing her English, in response to such gatekeeping practices, Cinthy agentively identified herself as a Spanish speaker whenever she came across that woman. This, however, prevented her from practicing her English. Cinthy however, did not give up speaking English with native speakers of English. She describes preferring to communicate in English whenever she saw an opportunity to do so. Yesterday, I needed to enroll for another semester here in college to study and 118 when I got to the office, I asked for information from the people who spoke English even though two ladies spoke Spanish there but I prefer to communicate in English. (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018) Cinthy, in this excerpt, was agentively avoiding speaking Spanish to practice her English-speaking skills. She positioned herself as an English-speaking student within the college. Her preference for speaking English at that time-correlated to her goal to communicate in English effectively in her future career. She perceived English as the linguistic capital she needed to succeed in her studies and her future career. Cinthy's identities were in constant flux as she was always becoming different kinds of persons in different contexts. Her bilingual identity served as a powerful tool to enact her identities and agency whenever she practiced speaking English with native English speakers. To speak or not to speak English sometimes depended on the affordances and constraints in the English Discourse community Cinthy engaged with outside her home and her ESL classroom. Apart from speaking with native English speakers to practice her English, Cinthy's identity as a Catholic inserted her within an English church Discourse community. Cinthy’s Use of English Within the Church Discourse Community Cinthy attended an all English church. Within this church, Cinthy used spoken and written texts in English. This included church services from the priest, religious texts, and songs in English. At the Catholic church, there is a book in English that had the whole mass or maybe the first or second mass. There are also songs in English but I prefer to sing in Spanish. The priest, he doesn’t speak in Spanish though he speaks Spanish. The mass at the church are all in English. (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018) 119 Here, Cinthy was immersed in English from the mass to the songs. She understood the mass in English though she preferred singing in Spanish. This could be attributed to her familiarity with the mass in Spanish. She explained: "I used to go to church with my grandmother, and I already know the complete mass in Spanish, so it's interesting to know how they are told in English" (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018). This statement sheds more light on why Cinthy preferred singing in Spanish instead of English, as she was more accustomed to the Spanish songs and could relate her catholic identity as embedded in Spanish rather than English. Cinthy however, did not recognize the texts and the kind of English she was engaging with within the church Discourse community. It was appropriate for her goals of effectively communicating in English in her career. She states, Maybe the type of English they use for the mass is not useful in my current life. It is interesting because even we don’t use those kinds of phrases so frequently. I think I go to the church not to learn English but because it is spiritually important for me to go there. (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018) In the excerpt above, Cinthy perceived the English used for mass as not the kind of linguistic capital she needed to learn English. Cinthy described the type of English she encountered during mass as outdated and medieval. Her engagement within the church Discourse community, therefore, had more spiritual benefits to her than learning English. She had no linguistic gains in attending the English church. She was, however, invested in the spirituality that she experienced within the church, which also part of her identity as a Catholic. 120 Cinthy’s Use of English Within Her Bilingual Family Discourse Community Even though Cinthy perceived her family's need to improve their English in the USA, she also worked on keeping their Spanish language. She encouraged her daughters to speak Spanish at home while they used English in their classrooms. "We have to speak in Spanish at home because maybe my daughters could forget the Spanish. So, we are trying to speak Spanish at home and the school, and they talk only in English." Here, Cinthy was highlighting the maintenance of Spanish within her family. She perceived Spanish as their cultural marker and part of their identity. There was, therefore, a push for language maintenance rather than replacement in her family. Each language had a place and significance in her family. Cinthy deemed it useful in equipping her family with bilingual literacy practices. By encouraging her family to speak Spanish at home and English at school, Cinthy highlighted literacy as contextual and changing based on affordances in specific Discourse communities. Her family spoke Spanish or English, based on their context, which in this case was their location either inside or outside their home. They had become contextual linguistic pattern recognizers and actors. Home and school become significant Discourse communities in which they straddled their bilingual identities as English and Spanish speakers. Although Cinthy encouraged the use of Spanish in the house and English at school, Cinthy exchanged vocabulary in pronunciation, writing, and reading English with her daughters, as she describes here. I consider it [learning English with daughters] mutual learning because they teach me some words that I can’t pronounce. Especially with the pronunciations, they make me yell about that because I try to pronounce words correctly and they are like: “It’s not like that! What are you saying?” They try to make jokes with my 121 pronunciation. I teach them something that I had learned maybe in the day and read their lectures from school with them. I want to learn not only to communicate with them [daughters] besides I want to help them with homework and I can learn from them too. It is interesting because I started to improve my vocabulary through their homework. When we study at home, I found a new word, first I look for the meaning in the dictionary and then look for some synonym that is familiar to me. (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018) In this excerpt, Cinthy, within her bilingual family Discourse community, took on the identities of a learner, a teacher, and a mother. She wanted to have conversations with her daughters and also help them with their homework. In her attempt to fulfill this motherly duty, she also learned English from them. Here, Cinthy's gendered identity as a mother positioned her to have more practice with her pronunciation and also learn new words in English. Cinthy further narrated that although she used English to help her children do their homework, she sometimes used Spanish too. "When I help them with their classes, I tried to speak in English sometimes and sometimes in Spanish" (Cinthy Interview, May 30, 2018). Cinthy, through this excerpt, exhibited a code-switching literacy practice just like Tina to make her interaction with her children meaningful. Through this practice, she was also maintaining her identities as a member of the Spanish speaking Discourse community as well as an English language learner. She served as a bridge between the home language and the target language within her family. Cinthy also practiced her English as part of her duties as a mother when she took her daughters for extracurricular activities. She apart sought for various opportunities that could expose her children to practice speaking English with native speakers of English. "I try to enroll in different activities where they can speak in English with other girls. That helps them a lot" (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018). Cinthy, in the above excerpt, was 122 aware of the need for social contact with native speakers of English for active English learning. She partook in activities with her children that also exposed her to practice speaking English. Cinthy's identity as a mother and the fulfillment of her responsibilities as a mother by taking her children to partake in extracurricular activities provided her with opportunities to practice more English: "I speak English with the girls who work there in gymnastics. When I am going to maybe pay [fees for the activities], I speak with the girls in music class the same way" (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018). Here, Cinthy had opportunities to express herself in English with native English speakers as part of her identity as a mother. In a sense, her role as a mother helped her achieve her goals of effectively communicating in English. This could help in her future career since she wanted to work in the USA. Cinthy’s Use of English Within Her Professional MBA Discourse Community Cinthy's engagement in the MBA Discourse community was monolingual, and the English language was the only tool she used to learn. She read and wrote in English and listened to lectures in English: "Actually, I am reading a lot of lectures in English. I write essays to analyze authors' ideas, and I am practicing reading and writing in English as I learn about my career" (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018). In this excerpt, Cinthy depicted a monolingual lingual practice which highlighted English with no reference to other languages. Cinthy was invested in this Discourse community because it afforded her the duality of learning English as well as advancing her professional studies. She states, I prefer to take notes in English. I take down notes directly on paper or on the computer. I use the google translator on my computer sometimes to translate 123 difficult words in Spanish to English or in English to Spanish. But most writing, I use English. I think in English, and write in English. (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018) In this excerpt, Cinthy used Spanish as a mediating tool within her English monolingual professional Discourse community. Technologies such as computers and applications such as google translator allowed her to learn English and also acquire knowledge in her profession. As she was immersed in discourses surrounding Business Administration, she was equally engaged in English. Within her professional Discourse community, Cinthy was agentively working towards her goal of learning English and positioning herself as a career woman within the USA. The MBA Discourse community, therefore, served as an ultimate gateway for Cinthy to communicate effectively and get a career. Cinthy's engagement within her professional career was also linked to her identity as a mother and the need for her to be a 'good mother' and a 'hardworking wife.' She states that she wanted her family to be successful, and she was sharing whatever she learned with her daughters and husband. I am learning a lot here. Even I share this knowledge with my husband and with my kids too because they need to improve their English. I can teach my daughters and my husband; I can tell them what I am learning about English. Some grammatical errors I had at the beginning have improved right now because I study a lot. My husband told me that I study all the time (laughs) and he likes me. I really enjoy study. (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018) In the above excerpt, Cinthy's motivation for investing in learning English and studying at the college is linked to her provision of knowledge for her family and her performance of a hardworking mother. Studying at college was her agency of garnering the attention and love of her family. Her husband liked her for studying hard, and her children were benefitting from her learning. Cinthy tried her best to expose her family to as much English as she could as she learned English from multiple Discourse 124 communities, including media-based Discourse communities. Cinthy’s Media-Based Discourse Communities That Used English Cinthy's engagement in the media-based Discourse community was part of her effort to have more practice with her English. She stated: "I try to spend so much time as I can. That is why I try to like complete like my contact with English with television, with movies, music, and with other people" (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018). Here, Cinthy was looking for opportunities to immerse herself in everyday activities in English: "We go to the movies almost once a week, and the most television that we see here at home is in English. Like news in the morning, maybe some other programs like Medicine program at noon yea" (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018). Here, Cinthy was gaining the language to talk about daily news and everyday life conversations in her new environment. Cinthy described how she used multiple texts and languages as she engaged within the media-based Discourse community to learn English. Cinthy explained that the subtitle was an important tool she used to learn English when watching movies and television. This was because it helped her to learn new expressions and vocabulary: "I try to be connected with the English program, and I try to activate the subtitle function (Spanish). Yea, because I learn some expressions and words that I cannot understand, so that helps me to understand" (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018). Here, Cinthy was engaged in a bilingual way of learning by watching English movies with Spanish subtitles. She used the Spanish titles to understand unknown vocabulary. Within the media-based Discourse community that utilized English, Cinthy's 125 children also served as sorts of language brokers as they explained to her contents in the movie in English that she could not understand. I saw this weekend at the The Lake House with Sandra Bullock. I go with my whole family or sometimes with my husband. It depends on what kind of movie we were going to see. Last Friday, we went to Tucson mall to watch a movie but it had no subtitles so at the end of the movie, I asked my children to help me understand and they explained it to me [in English] because they understand the movie more. It helps and they understand perfectly because it makes sense when they explain it. Every experience like a movie, conversation, or reading something helps me to improve my English or learn new vocabulary. (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018) Cinthy, in this narrative, highlighted how her gendered identity opened up opportunities for her to learn English. Each time she was around her children, she learned new vocabulary or had conversations in English. For example, her children became her language brokers when she had no access to the Spanish subtitles at the movie theatre. Apart from watching movies and television in English, Cinthy also listened to English music on YouTube. She explained that she loved music and had been learning English music lyrics for a long time. My whole life I have been listening to music in English and I like to look for the lyrics. With the internet now, it is easier to do that. When I learned music, I printed the lyric and I listened to it one and two and three times and at least try to learn the lyrics. Right now, it is easy to learn music on YouTube. YouTube is easier because you have music like karaoke and the music and lyrics come and then you learn from that. Music is a useful tool to learn English. I remember one expression from the singer, Christiana Aguilera “If you wanna be with me I can make your wish come true.” It was a very interesting phrase that I learned by listening and other more that I don’t remember this moment. (Cinthy Interview, July 31, 2018) The above excerpt highlights how music allowed Cinthy to learn new words and expressions in English. Cinthy pointed to the multiple tools that the media-based Discourse communities provided in learning English. For example, she could repeat listening to the lyrics, she could get expressions that she could use in her conversations, 126 and the lyrics for songs were easily accessible through YouTube. Within the media-based Discourse communities, Cinthy had opportunities to learn English anywhere as she watched movies and television with her family, or as she danced to music by herself. All these were activities that Cinthy invested in to learn English within the media-based Discourse community. Cinthy’s Investment in Learning English Cinthy invested in learning English because she wanted to communicate effectively in her future career. She aspired to work in the USA, and her ideology was that English was a gate opener for excellent job opportunities in the USA. Cinthy also agentively enrolled in a professional MBA course that served a dual purpose of providing her with expert knowledge and also improving her English. Cinthy's investment in learning English as part of her performance of agency to reposition herself as an independent working-class woman within the USA. She was taking advantage of her visa status, which only granted her permission to study as her form of empowerment and access to knowledge and language, which could translate to her future job in the USA. Cinthy was not only invested in English for her personal goals but also for her family. She wanted to learn more English so that she could be a good mother and wife. She needed English to help her daughters with their school work. She exchanged her knowledge in English with her children and engaged in a reciprocal exchange of English, all toward improving the English of her family and making her family thrive in their new environment. Cinthy's commitment to helping her family to learn more English is deepened when she expressed how she shared everything she learned with her family. 127 Cinthy's investment in the media-based Discourse community also significantly evidenced her investment in learning English. Her other Discourse Communities, such as her MBA and family English Discourse communities, were inevitable. Thus, she needed those communities to survive, and she had no choice to not engage in them. She needed to help her children navigate homework from school. The media-based Discourse community was a choice that she could do without, yet she used this community to expand and sustain her English learning. The possibilities and opportunities for learning English through the media-based Discourse community for Cinthy were enormous and multiple as she listened to music for vocabulary and fluency in English and watched movies to correct English pronunciation. Above all, Cinthy's investment in learning English had an intense relationship with her identity as a mother who was nurturing bilingual daughters and a graduate student who aspired to be identified as a professional working woman with the accumulative symbolic and material capital to thrive in her new environment. Her agency and identities also revolved around her choice of tools that were multiliteracies. Cinthy's narratives on her investment in learning English collectively painted a picture of a complex interplay between her ideologies about English, her identities, and forms of agency. Makara: “If You Need to Learn English, Use the Street” Makara’s Demographics and Immigration Background Makara, a 38-year-old woman, was born in Santiago, Chile. Makara and her husband Antione, a chief mining engineer, had three sons who were born in Chile. At the time of our first interview, Makara, Antione, and their three sons had immigrated from 128 Chile to the USA for 3 1/2 years. Antione had been transferred to work in the USA as an expatriate in the USA branch of his company. Antione's new status as an expatriate engineer in the USA required Makara and her sons to communicate in English in their day-to-day living since English is the dominant language in the USA. Makara explained during our interview that she needed to learn English to navigate her daily life. This is because her initial experience within the USA was difficult due to her limited exposure to the common English that was spoken on the street. She states, ...When I arrive, my reality here [in the USA] day by day was hard. I wasn't hearing and I didn’t understand what the people were saying in Walmart. I don’t understand anything. Here, people use slangs and I don’t know. That is the reason I decided to go to the class here at the church and try to learn English. (Makara Interview, March 30, 2018) In the above narrative, Makara described her frustrations in getting along with the English she encountered in the USA and gave reasons for her engagement with the adult ESL Discourse community. She needed literacy practices that would expose her to the day-to-day language in her new environment. Her agency to thrive in her new environment was to learn the common language used in day-to-day conversations or communications. In her predominantly Spanish-speaking Chilean community, Makara's reality with English in the USA was in contrast to her prior experience with English. Makara's experiences with English before and after migrating into the USA help to understand her agency and investment in learning English. 129 Makara’s English Language Learning Experiences Makara’s English Learning Experiences in Chile Makara's initial English learning was essential from daycare up to elementary in her country Chile. She explained that English during her elementary school time was basic. English in the school was pretty basic like the colors, the numbers, and basic phrases like: “This is the table; This is the book; Hello; How are you?” All the school is in basic English. At university, I did not study English. (Makara Interview, March 30, 2018) Makara, in her narrative above, described her English learning in Chile as fundamental. This points to the fact that she was always immersed in Spanish within her Spanish speaking country and had little exposure to English. Upon graduating from the University of Monica Herrera in Chile with a degree in social communication, Makara got a job at television productions and helped with publicity and advertisements in Chile: "I was working in the production of television commercials and soap operas. I worked on the sounds with the subtitles. I was an executive production manager. My work was all in Spanish" (Makara Interview, March 30, 2018). Here, Makara described her work as monolingual and predominantly in Spanish. She required no English at all in executing his job. Her limited English proficiency did not affect all of her. Spanish language within the Chilean community and her career positioned her within an upper-class status, and English had less capital for her success at her job. Makara's job, however, changed when she met Antione, her husband. Makara met her husband during her time of working as a production manager and married at the age of 27 and had three sons. After her marriage, Makara stopped working as an executive 130 production manager. She worked with her husband's company. She was in charge of helping expatriate native English-speaking women who did not know how to speak Spanish to navigate life in Chile. For the work of my husband, we lived in a community mostly American. The expatriate community is made up of Americans and we lived in this community before we came here and, in that place, I need to speak a little English with the guest. I need to speak a little English when they arrive in my country because they don’t speak Spanish. I try to teach them [American expatriates in Chile] Spanish and sometimes I need to go to the supermarket to buy stuff for their houses and I need to help them in my basic English. Makara, thus engaged in a bilingual exchange with the women in Chile since she used both Spanish and English to communicate with them. (Makara Interview, March 30, 2018) In the above statement, Makara positioned herself as a Spanish teacher who was also able to communicate in English. She was helping Americans navigate their new environment in Chile through her identities as a Spanish speaker and an English language speaker. Makara had a heightened interest in improving her English and sought the services of an English teacher with the help of her company before immigrating to the USA. Here, Makara positioned herself as an English language learner. I had an English teacher in Chile. I learned with her a lot because my English was basic. I get the teacher from the company because I speak basic English. The teacher taught me the future and the past tense and how I can make a conversation in English. (Makara Interview, March 30, 2018) Makara, in this narrative, was being exposed to English through her English teacher and was engaged in grammar and conversational lessons. Makara, unlike many language learners, however, had the ideology that she could learn with the native speakers of English better and solicited help from them to learn English. She was, however, not satisfied with the response she got from them. I tried to let them [Americans] I tried to do that but they don’t help me. I don’t know (laughs). Sometimes I tell them: “tell me if I am wrong”, but they never did that. I don’t know if it is not good for the Americans to correct people when they 131 speak. Because I try to do the same here [ USA] with other people and is not working. (Makara Interview, March 30, 2018) Makara, through the above narrative, depicted her learning English from native speakers of English as unproductive since she did not receive feedback on the correct forms or usage of vocabulary. She had the perception that it was probably a cultural thing with native speakers not correcting non-native speakers when they spoke wrong English. She did experience the same thing when she tried to learn English with native speakers of English in the USA. Makara’s English Learning Experience in the USA Makara saw her need to speak English in her host country as crucial for her survival. She had a difficult time understanding and speaking English for the first 2 years that she was in the USA. The first two years were hardest for me. I need to translate or try and think fast what I need to say. I was scared to get out of my house or to buy something or to go to the clinic or the hospital. I was nervous and I didn’t want to go outside. I needed to translate first in my cell phone and try to hear how I can say a word [in English]. And sometimes I feel ashamed to speak English. (Makara Interview, April 25, 2018) In this excerpt, Makara gives a clear picture of the frustrations she went through in preparing to go out for daily routines outside her house. She had to think and rehearse what she had to say, and she was ashamed to go outside. Here, Makara's struggle with her secondary Discourse community had implications on how she navigated her life in the USA. She had a restrictive movement. She had a minimal vocabulary to express herself in her dominant English-speaking country because she was afraid to go out and speak English. 132 Makara agentively devised a way to navigate life in the USA with her limited vocabulary. She quickly identified herself as an English language learner. Each time, she had the opportunity to introduce herself so that her audience would speak slowly to her hearing: "I learn to first say: ‘I don't speak English very well. Sorry, speak to me as slowly as possible.’ This was my first phrase. Because you know the Americans like to speak a lot faster, and it confuses me sometimes" (Makara Interview, April 25, 2018). Here, Makara seemed to have observed her environment and mapped out what she could do to remedy her situation by communicating with native speakers of English. She used her identity as an English language learner to get people to speak slowly and make conversations understandable to her. In a later interview, Makara described her English learning experience in the USA as difficult because she had little opportunity to practice her English with native Englishspeaking friends. Unlike her three boys who had the chance to speak English at school every day, Makara had no friends to speak English with. She details, My experience [learning English] was harder than my kids because my kids have the opportunity to speak English in the school every day. It wasn’t easy for me because I don’t have American friends here. If you don’t know the language, it is hard to make friends in a language that you don’t speak. I most need to search for the opportunity to learn and practice English. (Makara Interview, April 25, 2018) In the above excerpt, Makara perceived the opportunity to learn and practice English as necessary in her English learning process. She needed to speak English with others to fulfill her goal of communicating effectively in common English. However, she saw a limited opportunity for her to continually speak English with people since she had no English-speaking friends. She needed the opportunity to communicate in English. Makara enrolled in college-level English classes for 3 years in her quest to learn 133 more English. Still, she had to terminate her college enrollment because it was difficult for her to juggle her household responsibilities and college classes. I need to clean the house and do some dinners. I try to keep the house and go to the English class and it was hard for me. It was so different because in Chile I have people that help me in my house with the kids and also clean but not here. It’s really hard to find time trying to keep the house clean and learn English. (Makara Interview, April 25, 2018) Here, Makara's gendered responsibilities were gatekeeping her from learning more English. Makara also unveiled her various positioning within her Chilean and USA contexts. Within the Chilean context, Makara positioned herself as surrounded by helpers who took care of the house cleaning responsibilities and also took care of her kids. In the USA context, however, Makara had no help and had to do everything by herself. She, therefore, had no time to learn. Makara's demographics and immigration background are populated with her histories and experiences about learning English in Chile and the USA. Her desire to learn to communicate effectively in English in the USA and her struggles to have contact with native speakers of English to learn from them provided vital information that will help us appreciate how and why she invested in Discourse communities outside the USA ESL classroom to learn more English. The Discourse Communities Using English Outside the ESL Classroom Accessed by Makara in the USA In this section, I offer a portrait of the various English using Discourse communities that Makara engaged with outside the ESL classroom. I highlight the English language and literacy tools she used in these Discourse communities and how her 134 participation in these communities shaped her investment in learning English. Makara's Discourse communities outside her ESL classroom varied from face to face interactions in English which included interactions and activities in English within her family, to imagined English learning spaces that were media-based and included the use of English reality shows, YouTube English music, the computer programmed English and bilingual language learning applications such as Duolingo. I use the term 'imagined' to capture Makara's imaginings of herself as an English language learner through reproducing texts similar to that of the English Discourse community (writing, listening, speaking and reading in English) through the affordances of technologies such as the internet, television, and phones. Makara’s Use of English Within Her Bilingual Family Discourse Community Makara mostly spoke Spanish with her family at home. Her boys, however, spoke English when they were communicating amongst themselves. They only spoke English to her when they lacked the vocabulary in Spanish to explain to her what was going on at their schools. Such occasions often served as opportunities for Makara to learn and practice her English. She states, Usually, I like to speak just Spanish with them. But between them, they talk just in English and play in English. When they speak with me usually, they speak in Spanish because they know that English is not my language and there is a way to communicate between us but sometimes they want to tell me about a situation in the school and they feel they can’t say it in Spanish, then I say: “ ok don’t worry about that, you can try to speak in English and I can try to understand”. And sometimes they teach me some words that I don’t know how to pronounce correctly, they correct me. For me, this is good because I can better my pronunciation. Sometimes when I don’t know the words, I ask them. (Makara Interview, April 25, 2018) 135 Makara, in the above narrative, depicted a dual-use of Spanish and English in her house. She made her boys speak Spanish to her and only used English when they lacked the Spanish vocabulary to express themselves. Spanish and English occupied different spaces but were used interchangeably to make meaning within her bilingual family. She, however, got the advantage of learning English through her conversations in English with her boys. Makara's narrative on her use of Spanish in the house with her boys evidenced her move towards the maintenance of Spanish in the house even though they lived in a predominantly English-speaking country. This served as an act of agency in which Makara, the mother of the house, kept both Spanish and English as part of the family's literacy practices. Also, as a mother, Makara's identity often pushed her to spaces that required her to speak English and helped her to learn and practice her English. When you take the kids to the doctor’s appointment and the school, you have to speak English and you are speaking in English with them at the parent conference. Sometimes I help them with some homework when they want. I like to do that because that makes me feel closer to them, sharing what they are doing in the school and also is an opportunity for me to learn and practice English. (Makara Interview, May 25, 2018) Makara, in this excerpt, portrayed her position as a mother as giving her access to English both at home and outside home. In the house, she perceived helping her boys with their homework in English as both bonding and educational since it brought her closer to them and allowed her to learn English. Here, Makara's gendered identity as a mother opened up opportunities for her to learn English. She needed English to bond with her boys and help them be successful at school. Makara, apart from engaging with her bilingual family to learn English, also looked for opportunities to learn more English by investing in the media-based Discourse community. 136 Makara’s Media-Based Discourse Communities That Used English The media-based Discourse community is not an actual traditional interaction space but rather a kind of virtual and imagined space afforded by technology. It involves learners using media to learn English. The term media refers to both the mediums of communication (radio, recorded music, internet, television, print, film, and video) as well as the products or texts of these mediums (television shows and film productions, video games, websites). Within this imagined Discourse community, Makara relied heavily on media to improve her English vocabulary, listening skills in English, and also learning real English on the street. She explained that "If you need to speak English more, then you can use the street. The people in the street speak different English" (Makara Interview, May 25, 2018). Here, Makara was aware of the varieties of English (standard and nonstandard English) and was more invested in the nonstandard form of English, which she found on the street. Her goals of being able to communicate effectively in English in her day-to-day interactions made her preference for the street English understandable. To get more of such real uses of everyday English, Makara watched reality shows, such as Keeping up with the Kardashians and The Real. Makara’s English Within the Kardashians and Other Reality TV Discourse Communities Makara watched Keeping up with the Kardashians and The Real reality shows every week. Makara's goal for watching “The Kardashians” was to improve her pronunciation and get more vocabulary that she could use in her daily life. "In the show [Keeping up with the Kardashians] …sometimes I can hear how they pronounce some 137 words…the situation in which you can use such words or some phrase…keep practice for me. That helps me" (Makara Interview, May 25, 2018). Makara, in this excerpt, perceived “The Kardashians” as real representations of day-to-day happenings and conversations in English. She could learn daily conversations and develop her speaking skills through this show. She learned to pronounce and find contextual meanings of words. At a deeper level, Makara, through “The Kardashians”, was learning how to speak, act, and live like a real American. “The Kardashians”, which mirrors American culture and mannerisms, was Makara's sample of empowerment since the women in the show were portrayed as independent and social media gurus. They carried a lot of weight in terms of public admiration and opinion. Makara was carefully observing their language and mannerisms to act like them and speak like them. During the interviews, Makara made it evident that she even identified with the women in these reality shows, including The Real show. I like it a lot. Sometimes I identify with those girls. It is a crazy conversation with The Real! I like it, I enjoy that show... it is about the actuality or about some views that every day you can hear, the girls explain that... That helps me with the news. (Makara Interview, May 25, 2018) In the above narrative, Makara saw herself through the life conversations that the hostesses of The Real engaged in daily. Those topics were of interest to her, and she could understand where they were taking her and could get a glimpse of what was happening around her world through the show. The women of “The Kardashians” and The Real served as her conduit to the American way of speaking and living, which was empowering to Makara. Makara started watching the television shows with subtitles in English and later transitioned to watching them without subtitles. According to Makara, subtitles were 138 useful tools for her pronunciation in the first 2 years of her stay in the USA: "The two first years that I was living here in the States, I used the subtitles. That helped me a lot because it showed me what the pronunciation was. But in the last years, no subtitles because I can understand now" (Makara Interview, May 25, 2018). Here, Makara pointed to her engagement with the multiliteracies repertoire within her media-based Discourse community. She used both sound and visuals as she listened to the words and looked at how they were spelled on the screen. She engaged with multiple modes to learn English within the media-based Discourse community. The various modes that Makara used within the media-based Discourse community were deepened and made more apparent through her engagement with the bilingual language application Discourse community. Makara’s English Within a Bilingual Language Application Discourse Community Makara used the Duolingo application to practice her English vocabulary. She explained that this application was an interactive space for learning English, which included activities and incentives for learning: "It's like a game. Sometimes you need to do some activities for a week, and then you got some prize, or you can compete with other people about that" (Makara Interview, May 25, 2018). Makara, in this narrative, portrayed the Duolingo application as a double-edged sword that educated and also rewarded learners. The double incentive of learning through a game in English and getting rewards seemed motivational enough for Makara to keep using this application. Also, Makara's use of this application was agentic in the way that it kept her practicing her English without being embarrassed about making mistakes. "I use Duolingo since I 139 arrived [in the USA] It has helped me a lot because you don't feel embarrassed with yourself when you are wrong. You can go step by step until you advanced" (Makara Interview, May 25, 2018). Here, Makara pointed to the confidentiality that learning through the Duolingo provided her. It was a platform to make mistakes and learn without scrutiny from others, and Makara worked at her own pace sustaining her investment in learning English. Makara’s Investment in Learning English Above all, Makara's investment in learning English evidenced a complex interplay between her identities, her goals, and her agency in learning English. Through her engagement in various Discourse communities, Makara's narrative on her English learning experiences suggested that her investment in learning English was closely connected to her identity as a mother and her aspirations to speak common everyday English. Makara's level of investment in English was profoundly shaped through her gendered responsibility as a mother to three Chilean boys growing up in a predominantly English-speaking society. Her motherly responsibilities inserted her into spaces that opened up opportunities for her to practice her English. She needed to speak in English to their doctor, their teachers, and their coaches. Her sons' ability to communicate effectively in English was also beneficial to Makara as she learned the pronunciation of words from them through conversations. She, in return, helped them find the right words in Spanish to communicate with her effectively. There was fluidity in the use of multiple languages as tools in mediating between English and Spanish within her bilingual family 140 Discourse community. Makara was highly invested in Discourse communities that allowed her to have real experiences with learning English. Her emphasis on learning English was more about real things than the abstract standard ways of learning English. This was evidenced through her preference for media-based Discourse communities through television shows that provided her with the street English such as Keeping Up with the Kardashians and The Real within the media-based Discourse community. Her preference for learning to communicate in everyday English was aligned with her goal of learning to communicate in English in the USA. The media-based Discourse community also afforded Makara flexible tools to invest in learning English anywhere at any time continually. Within the media-based Discourse community, Makara was invested in the Duolingo bilingual application, which gave her access to new vocabulary and also allowed her to compete with other people in digital spaces to practice her English. She was particularly happy that the Duolingo app gave her agency in terms of avoiding embarrassment while practicing her English. In the above discussions, I provided the narrative portraits of Tina, Cinthy, and Makara, who were all learning English outside their adult ESL classes in the USA. I provided a general overview of their salient demographics and immigration background, which threw more light on why they invested in various Discourse communities to learn English. A portrait of their English learning experiences and the Discourse communities that Tina, Cinthy, and Makara straddled outside their ESL classrooms to learn English provided a complex interplay of their identities as mothers, professionals, ESL learners, and Spanish speakers. It also highlighted their goals and ideologies related to learning 141 English. Their performances of agency were shaped by their use of multiliteracies repertoires as mediational tools within their selected Discourse communities. In the next section, I provide a narrative portrait of Joy, Imma, and Winnie, who were all learning English outside their ESL classrooms in Ghana. I emphasize their demographic and immigration background, their English learning experiences, their investment in Discourse communities to learn English, and how these Discourse communities shaped their investment in learning English. The Narrative Portraits of Immigrant Women Learning English in Ghana Joy: “When I Teach Them French, I Receive English” Joy’s Demographics and Immigration Background Joy, a 24-year-old single woman, was born and raised in Abidjan, the economic capital city of the Ivory Coast in West Africa. At the time of our first interview, Joy had been in Ghana for about 6 months. Joy's immigration to Ghana was highly influenced by her job experiences back home in Abidjan after her bachelor's degree. She states, I didn’t get a job and I was at home. So, I decided to do something myself. I started my business-like selling popcorn and bridal cake for I think 3 months”. I got my job…but the pay was not enough…I wanted to up more [improve my skills for better job opportunities] so I decided to come here [Ghana] to learn English. (Joy Interview, July 25, 2018) Here, Joy positioned herself as an independent, self-driven woman who could take charge of her life. Therefore, she traveled to Ghana as a part of her strategic empowerment to be a highly paid professional woman. This is because she wanted to learn English to get a better job with higher remuneration, a common reason for learning English articulated by 142 many English language learners. She was aware that English carried the cultural capital for upward mobility and prosperous living for most English language learners in the job market. Joy's decision to travel to Ghana to learn English was agentic because she perceived English as a gate opener for a better job opportunity. Joy's narrative on her English learning experience depicted her as having little exposure to English before traveling to Ghana. All her schooling was done in French, and her first time of total immersion in English was in Ghana. Joy’s English Learning Experiences Joy’s English Learning Experiences on the Ivory Coast As stated previously, Joy's primary and secondary education in Ivory Coast was totally in French. She traveled to Ghana with little or no English and started at the primary level. Joy's experience learning English, therefore, started in Ghana. Joy's English learning experience in Ghana was fraught with issues on total immersion, difficulty pronouncing English words, and lack of opportunity to practice her English with English speaking Ghanaians. Joy’s English Learning Experiences in Ghana Joy narrated that it was challenging for her to learn English at the initial stage because she was immersed in English without any support from her primary language, which was French. So, you live in your country [Abidjan in West Africa] with all your French and you come into this country [Ghana] and start everything in English. That makes the beginning difficult. Sometimes we expect ... maybe they will teach us slowly with French mixed with English you know but it is not like that. Only English, 143 that makes it difficult. (Joy Interview, July 25, 2018) In this excerpt, Joy pointed to the struggles that many English language learners encountered as they navigated their secondary Discourse. Language learning becomes a daunting task when learners are left to struggle without support from their primary Discourse. Joy also described her daily experiences with English in the Ghanaian community as sometimes difficult because she could not pronounce certain English words correctly: "In the stores sometimes when I want to place an order to buy something, I cannot pronounce certain words. I wanted to buy matches [lighter], and I said: 'I want manchess.' The seller asked: 'What do you want to buy?' I said: 'I want manchess do you know it?' It is very, very difficult for me to communicate" (Joy Interview, July 25, 2018). In this narrative, Joy pointed to the confusion and stress associated with navigating unfamiliar words in English. Just like Tina's incident with the skewers at Walmart in the USA, Joy had to struggle to find the right word to use to get the services she needed in Ghana. Joy also narrated an incident in which she struggled to get the right word to express herself in public transport and was mocked for pronouncing the word 'fault' as 'force.' I took a trotro [Ghanaian word for public transport] and I was with a friend. She was trying to tell alert the ‘mate’ [Ghanaian word for bus conductor] to drop her off at the right bus stop. The trotro mate was trying to speak back to her in Twi [Ghanaian language] she was lost [did not understand what the bus conductor said] and I said [in English]: “Is it her force? She does not understand Twi?” The mate [bus conductor] laughed at me because I said ‘force’ instead of ‘fault’. I got angry because of that and I asked the mate: “Can you speak French?” He said: “No! “I said: “Aha! I can’t speak English but I can speak French very well. That is precious to me. Your English is special to you so don’t laugh at me. I am just trying to learn also your language and the mate [bus conductor] kept quiet. (Joy Interview, July 25, 2018) 144 In the above excerpt, Joy found herself tangled in the multiple languages used within multilingual countries such as Ghana. Her friend, who could not speak the local Ghanaian language, Twi, got confused when the mate of the bus spoke back to her in Twi after she spoke to him in English. In an attempt to jump to her rescue, she could not pronounce the word " fault " and was mocked by the mate. However, Joy agentively defended her inability to pronounce the word “fault” in that instance correctly. She quickly positioned herself as a fluent French speaker instead of an English language learner. She used her identity as a fluent French speaker to silence the bus conductor. Her ability to straddle different languages empowered her when she was positioned as speaking bad English. She was assertive of her ability to speak French. Joy narrated another significant problem affecting her English language learning in Ghana: the lack of opportunity to speak English to English-speaking Ghanaians. This situation was compounded by the fact that she was living with French-speaking friends. The problem is if you don’t have the opportunity to use this language [English], to practice it, like speak every day that can make learning very difficult. Most of my friends are French. Also, at home, I am with French people. It is difficult. When they start to speak English and notice that it is difficult for you to get what they are saying, they just translate it in French and start to speak French. You must stay with English people, not French people and you must stress yourself to try to speak English every day, everywhere. (Joy Interview, July 25, 2018) Joy, in this excerpt, was aware that she needed to practice speaking English to get better at communicating effectively in English. Still, she had limited opportunities to do that because she lived in a French-speaking community in Ghana, and all her friends spoke French. Joy's French environment negatively affected her English learning. Joy needed every opportunity available to practice her English. Joy further explained that she needed to find opportunities to learn English 145 because she spent minimal time learning at the Eagle Vision Institute. "It is very interesting. I spend just three hours at school, that is not enough, ...so the rest you have to do it yourself" (Joy Interview, July 25, 2018). Here, Joy reiterates the limited opportunities to communicate in English and the need for such opportunities for English learners. Joy, therefore, agentively invested in Discourse communities outside her ESL classroom that used English to learn more English. Joy’s Ghanaian Discourse Communities Using English Outside the ESL Classroom In this section, I offer a portrait of the various English Discourse communities that Joy engaged with outside the ESL classroom. I highlight the English language and literacy tools she used in these Discourse communities and how her participation in these English Discourse communities shaped her investment in learning English. Given the linguistic and cultural diversity of present societies and specifically multilingual groups of people such as Joy, other languages such as French bleed through some of the Discourse communities that used English in this study as tools for meaning-making. Joy's Discourse communities varied from face-to-face interaction in English with Ghanaian English speakers in bilingual Discourse communities (teaching French to English speakers) and interactions and activities in English within her bilingual Church Discourse community. Joy also engaged in imagined English learning spaces that were media-based and included the use of English movies, television programs, and YouTube music and English learning applications such as the English dictionary application. I use the term 'imagined' to capture Joy's imaginings of herself as an English language learner 146 through reproducing texts similar to that of the English Discourse community (writing, listening, speaking and reading in English) through the affordances of technologies such as the internet, television, and phones. Joy’s English With Ghanaian English Speakers in Bilingual Discourse Communities Joy showed a commitment to learning English by investing in a Discourse community that positioned her as a French teacher to English speakers. Joy saw her identity as a fluent native French speaker useful to achieve her desired goal of learning English: "I teach French here …. [Ghana]. It is like a benevolar…is free… that is my politics to learn English very well…because you know when I teach them in French, I also receive the English… so is like an exchange" (Joy Interview, August 25, 2018). Joy, in this excerpt, used both English and French as tools to teach French. She further explained that through her teaching, she improved her writing and pronunciation skills in English. …That help me with the writing, because I have to know how to write it [in English] before going to teach. I have to write it on the board. I must know the correct writing, correct spelling before going there, and also the pronunciation because the children when your pronunciation is not correct, they will say, Eii madam, say it like that. (Joy Interview, July 25, 2018) Joy established a reciprocal relationship with English speaking children and practiced her English with them as she taught them French. The children served as a conduit for receiving feedback and practicing her English. Through this process, Joy created an empowering platform for learning English, which was similar to what Tina, Makara, and Cinthy experienced with their children as they learned English. Joy's identity as a woman 147 drew her to the children and opened up opportunities for her to learn more English. Here, the ability of children to be critical in their feedbacks was beneficial to Joy as it kept her on her toes to use English correctly. Joy saw her investment in this bilingual Discourse community as worthwhile since it provided her access to her goal, which is to learn English and also placed value on her primary language, French. Joy's identity as a Christian inserted her within the church Discourse community, which used English and helped her practice her English with other people. Joy’s English Within the Ghanaian Bilingual Church Discourse Community During the interview sessions, Joy identified herself as a Christian and narrated that she learned English whenever she attended Church. She described her Church as an English assembly that used only English during services but sometimes used Twi (Ghanaian dialect) when they had a general church assembly: "At Church when they say English Assembly, all the things are in English. Everybody there speaks English, so it is better for me… and you can get some friends there and communicate with them in English" (Joy Interview, August 25, 2018). Here, Joy perceived her Church's English assembly as a fertile place for her to speak English since the people around her spoke English, and the service was conducted in English. Joy also described the texts and tools used within her bilingual church Discourse community as favorable for her to learn pronunciations of English words.: "They project the lyrics on the screen so you can just read and try to sing with them to help me with the pronunciation, and I also saw the words. It is very interesting" (Joy Interview, August 25, 148 2018). In this narrative, Joy highlighted the multiple modalities, such as visual and audio, that helped her learn English within her English church assembly. Joy's English learning moment in the English church Discourse community sometimes became difficult as the Church switched from English to Twi during district meetings. The last week, there was this meeting [district assembly] and all the things were in Twi so I left the place before it ended. It was very difficult. They put just the big points on the board [in English] but I was lost and bored. The same thing [using only Twi] happened on Sunday but because I complained to the elder and some friends. The church sent me some texts in English explaining what they were saying in Twi but that wasn’t enough for me. (Joy Interview, July 25, 2018) In the above narrative, Joy was immersed in one of the local languages in Ghana called Twi. Joy was not happy with the switch from English to Twi and left the assembly earlier than expected. Twi did not have the cultural capital that Joy wanted to invest in, and she agentively made an exit from the church Discourse community each time she found it not meeting her goal of learning English. Joy was not silent whenever she saw a potential break in English communication within her Discourse community. Her early departure from the Church and her report of her displeasure during the break in English communication in the above excerpt was all agentic towards her English learning. Joy's identity as a Christian sustained her within the church Discourse community, just like Cinthy. Her spirituality was magnified within the Church Discourse community more than her English language learning. Joy continued to seek other places that helped her learn English. One such place was the media-based Discourse community that involved the use of television, movies, and YouTube music and phone applications to learn English. 149 Joy’s Media-Based Discourse Communities That Used English Within the media-based Discourse community, Joy identified herself as a lover of gospel music, movies, and television shows such as Grey's Anatomy. She listened to gospel music from YouTube and watched movies from the television. Joy's engagement within such media-based Discourse communities was agentively towards learning English. Joy explained that as a Christian, she preferred gospel music and used it to learn English vocabulary. On YouTube, I learn only gospel music. I love gospel music and I like to sing. It is easy for everyone to learn a song. It is easy to practice. Above the melody, above the music, I want to understand the words and sing with all my heart. (Joy Interview, August 25, 2018) In this narrative, Joy framed her use of gospel music for learning English on three important things: her identity as a Christian, her love for music, and the simplicity of learning with music. She loved singing and found it as a worthwhile instrument through which she could easily learn English. She did not just love the melody, but she also paid attention to the meaning of the words. Joy perceived her interest in Christian texts such as gospel music, her interest in singing, and the simplicity of singing. She could dovetail to improve her English learning efforts. Joy also found learning English through music as a versatile and useful literacy practice. It is interesting with the music because you can replay, stop it, and go back till you get the words. Umm is trying to get the English words also, the pronunciation. They help me [gospel music] Yea sometimes I get the lyrics but sometimes I am trying to find the words when they pronounce it. (Joy Interview, September 25, 2018) Here, Joy pointed to flexible literacy practice associated with learning with music, which included opportunities for unlimited repetitions in the form of replaying music to get the correct pronunciation of words. Through these repetitive processes, Joy, just like Cinthy, 150 was sharpening her listening skills and expanding her vocabulary through the lyrics of songs she was listening to. The drive behind this literacy practice was her interest in music as a genre. During the interview, Joy also recounted how she watched English television and movies to enhance her pronunciation. Joy described how she used both audio and visual texts to learn English as she watched shows and movies on her television stating, If I see some writing under the picture [subtitles] I am trying to learn to read and at once listen to get pronunciation too. Am trying to do the two things at once reading and listening and if there is nothing written under the picture, am trying just to get the words to get the meaning and if I don’t know the word, if I get a new word, I looking for the dictionary [on phone] to get the meaning. (Joy Interview, September 25, 2018) In this narrative, Joy described the versatile nature of her multiliteracies repertoire. She could multitask on literacy practices such as reading, listening, and speaking as she watched movies and searched for the meanings of words that appeared on the screen from her phone dictionary. The dictionary was an essential technology for Joy because it provided her with the pronunciation of new words. She also learned the contextual meanings of words through her phone dictionary. When I watch TV, I have my dictionary close to me so when I heard some words different, I just take the pronunciation and try to find it in my dictionary something like that…. Most of the time I use my phone. That is the advantage, benefits of technology (laughs). You don’t have to have a big book or a pen to write something. You can choose to write it on your phone, check on your dictionary. (Joy Interview, September 25, 2018) In the above excerpt, Joy highlighted her world of learning English in the media-based Discourse community as embedded in the use of literacy tools such as phone applications that gave her access to meanings and pronunciations of words other than the traditional 151 print bound literacy. Joy also utilized billboards to learn to read and get the meaning of words in English. She read billboards as she commuted in buses [trotro] or as she walked on the streets. Her phone dictionary helped her to get the meaning of the English words on those billboards. If I see the thing for the advertisement, the billboards on the street, I am trying to learn to read what is on this billboard and I am trying to translate it. Even if it is in the sky, on the bus on the door, if I know I see something written in English, I am trying to translate it in my mind. If it is difficult, I get my dictionary to get the correct meaning. Whenever I am in the car, in the trotro, I am trying to do it [read billboards]. Even if I am walking, I am trying to read everything outside, on the boards, am trying to read and translate. (Joy Interview, September 25, 2018) Joy, in the above statement, depicted a strong liking for reading things surrounding her in English. She was more interested in the everyday use of English, which could be found on billboards and posters in her community. Joy's interest in reading billboards came as a surprise since she once indicated her dislike for reading books: "I don't like to read the book because it is very is very difficult. I don't like the book to learn, but that is the truth" (Joy Interview, September 25, 2018). Even though Joy could read anything in English on billboards, she did not like reading books. Joy's preference for reading billboards and dislike for reading books led to an understanding that Joy was drawn to read the everyday English language in her surrounding environment. Her search for meanings of words on billboards around her highlighted her interest in how English language was used around her. Joy’s Investment in Learning English Above all, Joy's investment in learning English evidenced a complex interplay between her identities, her goals, and her agency in learning English. Joy's narrative on 152 her English learning experiences through her engagement in various Discourse communities suggested that her investment in learning English was closely connected to her identities as a future professional lady and her aspirations to speak common everyday English. Joy had the neoliberal ideology that English would give her access to a better job back home. This neoliberal ideology fueled her engagement in Discourse communities outside her ESL classroom that opened up spaces for her to learn English. However, these spaces tied to her identity as a Christian, a music lover, and a woman who could communicate well with children. Joy's significant indicator of her investment in learning English was her commitment to teaching French to children who spoke English in Ghana. By positioning herself as a teacher instead of a learner, Joy enacted agency through her mother tongue. Her enactment of identities as a fluent French speaker and an English language learner as she engaged within the bilingual Discourse community indicated that she was not only maintaining her French-speaking identity but also achieved her desired goal of being fluent in English. In this way, Joy was working within a heterogenous concept of literacy that was empowering. Also, Joy's daily engagement within the media-based Discourse Communities leveraged her investment in learning English as these media-based Discourse communities were embedded in multiliteracies and afforded her the flexibility to learn English anytime throughout her day and sustained her learning of English. For example, Joy's phone dictionary and television were the most essential tools in her English learning. She stated that she could not understand the new words and how to pronounce certain words without her dictionary. Through the television, Joy had access to movies 153 and English TV programs. Joy also learned English through gospel music on her phone. Joy's investment in English was profoundly shaped by the media-based Discourse communities and multiliteracy tools that made it flexible for her to learn English. Imma: “If You Want to Improve in Your Field, You Have to Know English” Imma’s Demographics and Immigration Background Imma is a 26-year-old single woman born and raised in Benin. She had a bachelor's degree in agricultural economics and was pursuing a master's degree in Biostatistics when I first communicated with her. At the time of our interview, she had been in Ghana for 7 months to learn English and had enrolled in an adult ESL program at the Eagle Vision Institute in Accra, Ghana. She explained that she needed to learn English to improve herself in her field. English is an international language if you want to improve in your field you have to know English, you have to be able to speak English fluently. That’s why I decided to go to Accra and I have learned English over there for seven months. I think with my field, I have to speak English. You cannot do statistics without English as every software I use is in English. So, I think English is like part of me now. (Imma Interview, August 1, 2018) Imma's ideologies about English pushed her to invest in learning to speak English. She saw speaking English as an essential and integral part of her life: Here, Imma's ambition was to improve her job skills through speaking English. Imma's investment in English was fueled by her perception that English would improve her job skills. Imma, just like the other women learning English, perceived English as a gateway for improvement in her field. She was, therefore, determined to acquire English. She traveled from Benin to Ghana as part of her determination to learn English to improve her job 154 skills. Imma further explained that she also needed English to advance her education. She had intentions to pursue a master's degree in Ghana. When I left my country, I wanted to start my master’s in Ghana. That’s why I left my country. And because they said before applying at the university I have to, I need to obtain proficiency in English that’s why I went to Eagle Vision Institute. So before leaving my country, I was focused on learning English. My goal was to speak English fluently. (Imma Interview, August 1, 2018) Imma in the above excerpt indicated her intentions for moving to Ghana to learn English as part of her desire to further her education in a Ghanaian university and also attain fluency in speaking English. Imma was specifically invested in the spoken aspect of English. She explained that she needed the spoken form of English most: "In English, what I need is to speak because when I am writing, I make fewer mistakes than when I am speaking" (Imma Interview, August 1, 2018). Here, Imma's emphasis was on one out of the four elements of language. She was not interested in writing, reading, or listening since she perceived herself as having mastered those areas. She needed the spoken form of English to communicate effectively. This investment in the spoken aspect of English becomes understandable with a critical look at Imma's English learning experience. Imma’s English Learning Experiences Imma’s English Learning Experiences in Benin Although Imma was born in a predominantly French-speaking country, she had exposure to English throughout her schooling. She learned English as part of her primary and university education in Benin. Imma started learning basic English at a private school during her primary education in Benin. She narrated that she could only have access to 155 English at the primary level through private schools in her country. She recalled some of basic English she was taught: "Good morning, how are you? I am fine and some things like that" (Imma Interview, August 1, 2018). Here, Imma did not get exposure to English enough in terms of speaking. She was engaged in the basics of speaking English. Imma continued learning English at the junior and high school levels. She, however, did not prioritize English and just learned it for marks. In college, everybody must do English. English is a subject in College…I mean by college, what they call Junior high school or senior high school ...I did English for 7 years in college as a subject at school but I didn’t care because it was not my priority. I did it just for the marks so if I got good marks, that’s great. I didn’t think about how to speak or grammar or something like that. I just learn for marks. (Imma Interview, August 1, 2018) Imma, in the above excerpt, pointed to her agency in learning English at that time. As a French speaker in a francophone country, Imma had little interest in speaking English since she identified with her French language and only learned English for marks. Just like Cinthy, Imma saw her native language as the cultural marker and the language that helped her to identify with her friends. Her priority was to be a French-speaking woman at that time. Imma became highly interested in learning English and began to prioritize it after completing her bachelor's degree in agricultural economics. This was because she realized she did not know anything in English: "When I finished my bachelor's, I realized that I didn't know anything in English" (Imma Interview, August 1, 2018). Here, the reality of English as cultural and economic capital within fields across the world became real to Imma. She repositioned herself from not caring to learn English, to caring about knowing everything about English. Fearing that not knowing English could jeopardize her job prospects, Imma had an epiphany to study English in Ghana. 156 Imma’s English Learning Experiences in Ghana Imma enrolled in an ESL program upon arrival in Ghana with the help of her friend. Even though she had a late enrollment, she was able to catch up with her class as she was determined to learn English. I heard about Eagle Vision through one of my friends. She was learning English at Eagle Vision. She started in February and as I wanted to study in Accra in March, she just told me if I come to that school, I will get what I want [speak English] quickly. So, I just came here following her advice. I came late. My classmates had started before I came. I missed 2 weeks before and at Eagle vision, we do three weeks of class and one week of exams so I come when they were in the third week and I write my exams. It was interesting. As I wanted to learn, I was able to catch up quickly and then I continued. (Imma Interview, September 1, 2018) Imma, in this excerpt, described how she choose her school in Ghana upon recommendation from a friend and how she had to catch up with her classmates. Her ability to catch up in the class exhibited her ambivalence and her investment in learning English. We are not too many in a class so we have time with our teachers. Sometimes when it is speaking class version, for example, everybody has the opportunity to talk. Even for reading, for pronunciation, everybody will speak. That helps me. (Imma Interview, September 1, 2018) Imma, through this narrative, perceived her experience at the Eagle Vision Institute as worthwhile since she got the opportunity to speak and listen in English. Speaking was prioritized in her class as everyone had the opportunity to speak. Apart from learning English at the Eagle Vision, Imma also learned English through her engagement with Discourse communities that used English outside her ESL program, as described below. 157 Imma’s Ghanaian Discourse Communities Using English Outside the ESL Classroom In this section, I offer a portrait of the English Discourse communities that Imma engaged with outside her ESL classroom. I highlight the English language and literacy tools she used in these Discourse communities and how her participation in these Discourse communities shaped her investment in learning English. Imma engaged in varied bilingual Discourse communities that used English. These Discourse communities varied from face-to-face interaction with colleagues and friends in a national science and mathematics professional Discourse community, English with her French-speaking friends to English within a bilingual Discourse community. Imma’s Interacting in English With Colleagues and Friends Within the National Science and Math Quiz Discourse Community Imma took a 1-month break from the ESL class and started work as a production assistant for a science and mathematics quiz in Ghana. During her time as a production assistant, Imma constantly spoke English with her co-workers. She also wrote reports and emails in English. Her experience within the math and science Discourse community helped her to sharpen her speaking, reading, and writing skills in English. I have also spent one-month doing training with Ghanaians. I have tried for the next one month speaking English. I was with the National Science and Math quiz. I was a production assistant so I just had Ghanaians around me. I was obliged to speak English, I first tried, I could not speak. I was saying nothing. Then someone told me: ‘If you make a mistake, then we correct you but don’t feel shy about speaking’. That’s why I try to speak. I have noticed that I have learned a lot. I have improved in my speaking and writing because every week you have to make a report and send it by mail. I practiced speaking, reading, and writing. (Imma 158 Interview, September 1, 2018) Here, Imma pointed to her exposure to real-life conversations with Ghanaians who spoke English. She had the opportunity to practice her English daily. However, within this space, Imma initially remained quiet because she could not express herself in English. She, however, had supportive English speakers who were ready to provide feedback once she made a mistake. The resultant effect of such support was her improvement in speaking English upon her return to her school. The significance of social support was highlighted as crucial for learning how to talk about a language. Within the National Science and Math Discourse community, Imma learned the correct pronunciation of words from her friends. She narrated a funny encounter she had with her pronunciation of the word “teeth.” When I was doing the training for the science and math quiz, one night I think just before the end, I was discussing with my friend and I wanted to say I am going to brush my ‘teeth’. And I said I am going to brush my “thief.” Aww, they start laughing. I said: “Why are you laughing?” Then I remembered that I should have said teeth but I said, thief. And they said: “No! There is no thief here, it is just your teeth!” I felt shy but after that, I laughed with them. (Imma Interview, September 1, 2018) Imma, in the above excerpt, gave an example of how genuine feedback from English speakers could help English learners improve their speaking. She received feedback on her mistake in her pronunciation of teeth and took no offense as she laughed with them. Also, Imma's identity as a professional scientist inserted her within a space where she could use and practice her English. Through this space, she also made friends who gave her feedback on the correct usage of English. Imma was particularly invested in speaking English with English speakers each time she had the opportunity to do so because nonEnglish speaking friends always surrounded her at home. 159 Imma’s Interacting in English With Her French-Speaking Friends Within Her Bilingual Discourse Community Imma was ambitious to speak and practice her English even with her bilingual friends. She, however, did not appreciate her friends' literacy practices, which were predominantly embedded in speaking French. As I was with my Benin friends, they always try to speak French or our local language. That delays me in speaking English because when you are at school [ESL] you speak English but when you come home, there is always someone talking with you in French or local language. (Imma Interview, October 1, 2018) Imma, in this narrative, reiterated the problem of limited exposure to practicing or speaking English experienced by many learners. Her Francophone environment gave her a limited opportunity to speak in English. Imma was determined to practice her English among her francophone friends and took a drastic agentic practice of speaking only English even when she was approached in French. When you want to speak English even though the person is speaking to you in French, you reply in English. That will make the person speak English with you. You just speak English when they are speaking French... Then if they don’t want to speak English with you they will leave you and speak it with someone else… As I wanted to learn English, I tried my best to speak. That’s how I was able to learn at least a bit in English. I can’t say now I am fluent but now, I can even speak and make people understand what I am saying. (Imma Interview, October 1, 2018) In this excerpt, Imma perceived a hegemonic approach that privileged an English only literacy practice as strategic in helping her improve her English. Communicating solely in English was her choice to achieve her goal of getting a better job and furthering her education. She, at this point, was using English agentively in a restrictive as well as liberating way. She needed to choose English over French to get a better job and 160 education. Imma's English learning goals and her desire to pursue a master's degree in a Ghanaian university took a different turn when her mother got into an accident. During one of our member checks, Imma was in Benin with her mother, who had been involved in an accident, and she had missed the deadline to apply for the university in Ghana: "My mum had an accident, and I had to wait till she left the hospital. So, I was thoughtful. I didn't apply in time" (Imma Interview, October 1, 2018). Here, Imma's identity as a daughter limited her continuous learning of English in Ghana. As a good daughter, she had to make sacrifices for her mother to get well. Therefore, she opted to continue learning English in Benin and enroll in a master's degree in Biostatistics as she nursed her mother back to good health in Benin: "I want to continue learning English but in my country. I am doing my masters in biostatistics here" (Imma Interview, October 1, 2018). Here, Imma's agency in going back to Benin to continue her studies and to learn English was highly influenced by her gendered identity as a woman and a daughter who had to care for her mother. During the interview after her return to Benin, Imma narrated how she was struggling to keep learning English in a French-speaking country. She explained that even though her master's course was taught in English, she had little opportunity to speak English. As I am in a French-speaking country now, everybody speaks French even if you are trying to speak English, it is like: “You! You are coming from Accra; Ghana and you are showing off your English. Here in Benin, I am not practicing English at all. I am indeed doing Biostatics and my courses are in English even that, when the teacher is not around, my friends speak French. (Imma Interview, October 1, 2018) 161 Here, Imma highlighted the struggles in maintaining a language amid limited opportunities for practice. She was inserted in a francophone community, and everything around her was in French. Imma saw an opportunity to continue learning English by volunteering as a French teacher to English language speakers within her country. This created a bilingual Discourse community through which she could continue to learn how to speak English. Imma’s Interaction in English Within a Bilingual Discourse Community Imma was very much aware that she had limited or no chance to speak English in her French environment. She, however, saw it as worthwhile to engage in a kind of reciprocal system which involved practicing speaking English in exchange for French tutoring. I have 2 students they are Indians. They can speak English but they are trying to learn French. They are sellers in Benin and they don’t know French at all. They will learn French as I can get the English…. They don’t know French so for the moment we are obliged to speak English. I am like the teacher teaching them French so just speak English with them as they just know English. I think that speaking English with them, makes me improve myself. I didn’t face any difficulty to speak with them. (Imma Interview, November 1, 2018) This excerpt highlighted Imma's level of investment in learning English. She knew that the Indians needed French to trade in Benin. She was also aware that these Indians had the linguistics capital that she needed, which was English. Therefore, she found a way to help them get the linguistic capital they needed to trade while she acquired the linguistic capital required to improve her job skills. English and French were used as literacy tools for communication and learning in this Discourse community. 162 Within the bilingual Discourse community, Imma used baby books in French to help her students with pronunciation, grammar, speaking, and learning new words. I use baby school books to help them pronounce because they don't know how to pronounce in French…. I’ve got them pronunciation books, how to pronounce in French. So, we do some pronunciation, we try to speak, I help them to learn new words in French. We also do a little bit of grammar. We are starting everything little by little. (Imma Interview, November 1, 2018) Imma in the narrative above immersed her students in speaking French as she taught them new vocabulary and pronunciation. This practice tallied with Imma's ambition to learn how to speak English fluently and spoke volumes on how her ambitions to learn English influenced her investment in literacy tools in English Discourse communities. Imma’s Investment in Learning English Imma's narrative on her English learning experiences through her engagement in various Discourse communities suggested that her investment in learning English was closely connected to her identity as a professional scientist, her neoliberal ideology about English as the language of science, and her aspirations to speak English fluently. Imma sought every opportunity to speak and learn English in Ghana and performed agency through her use of multilingual repertoires within her selected Discourse communities. Imma's investment in learning English was evident when she could not achieve her goal of pursuing further studies in Ghana and returned to her country. Within her French-speaking country, Imma agentively found ways to continue to speak English by engaging in a French/ English language reciprocal system within a Bilingual Discourse community with two English speaking Indians in Benin. Opportunities to speak or practice her English with English speaking people kept Imma invested in learning 163 English. Above all, Imma's investment in learning English had an intense relationship with her goal of speaking English fluently and her identities as a better writer than a speaker of English and a future professional Biostatistician. As she previously stated during the interview, she made fewer mistakes in writing English than speaking it. Imma's neoliberal ideology of English as the language of science also pushed her to insert herself in spaces where she could practice speaking English. Her agency and identities also revolved around her choice of multilingual tools. Tina's narratives on her English learning experiences collectively painted a picture of the complex interplay between her identities, her forms of agency, and her hegemonic ideologies surrounding English. Winnie: “I Want to Power a Lot and Make Business From Other Countries” Winnie’s Demographics and Immigration Background Winnie, a 24-year-old single woman, was born and raised in the town of BoboDioulasso in Burkina Faso, West Africa. At the time of the interview, Winnie had been in Ghana for 3 months to learn English. She traveled to Ghana to study English after obtaining her certificate in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). In Ghana, she enrolled in an ESL program at the Eagle Vision Institute. She was also pursuing a degree in Business Management at the Pentecost University of Ghana during our first interview. When I came here, it was because of English, but I also decided to learn Business management at Pentecost University. I want to power a lot [become powerful] and make business with other people from other countries. (Winnie Interview, October 2, 2018) 164 In the above excerpt, Winnie agentively laid out her plans for learning English and enrolling in a business management program at the university. Winnie saw her source of empowerment as embedded in her ability to speak English and her further education in Business management. She strategically positioned herself to gain a high status of getting a future business career that would open the world's gate of trade to her. Earlier, Winnie had been to Ghana with her mother to trade on two occasions before she decided to travel alone to Ghana to learn English: "I came from Burkina Faso in Bouboudulaso. I came here [Ghana] with my mother. She used to sell cloth here at the trade fair, so I came with her two times. So, I decided to come here and learn English" (Winnie Interview, October 2, 2018). Here, Winnie's previous experience with her mother in Ghana allowed her to scout Ghana as a viable place to learn English. She states, I came here because of English. English is important. We are speaking English in many countries more than French. Because of that, I decided to learn it. There is no job there [in her country], so if you can speak both languages [French and English], it will increase your chance of getting a job…. Right now, they [Employers] are looking for bilinguals. I want to know more English because of my work. If I start to work [future job], I have to express myself in English very well. (Winnie Interview, October 2, 2018) In the above excerpt, Winnie described her goals and how her neoliberal ideology of English had fueled her presence in Ghana as a commodity she needed to be a future global businesswoman. As a daughter of a businesswoman who sold cloth in Ghana, Winnie probably wanted to follow her mother's footsteps but in her way. She needed English to launch her global business. She was looking for a more empowered way of doing business. She was convinced about the power that English wielded around the world and the economic gains it provided in employment. She wanted to be powerful and 165 perceived the English language as the tool that would provide her with such power. Winnie also alluded to the significance of bilingualism in our current society. As a French-speaking woman, Winnie was aware that she needed English in addition to her French to empower her in her future job as a businesswoman. Winnie's journey to Ghana was not without challenges. As an only daughter, she had to wrestle with her father for permission to travel outside her country on her own without any family member: "It wasn't easy because my father wanted me to stay. He wouldn't agree that I come alone. This is my first time to go far from my family" (Winnie Interview, October 2, 2018). Here, Winnie positioned herself as an independent daughter capable of making long-distance journeys away from home. Her driving force for such bravery was her quest to learn English and get a better job. Winnie’s English Language Learning Experiences Winnie’s English Learning Experience in Burkina Faso Winnie started learning English at the middle and high school in Burkina Faso, West Africa. She, however, explained that during that time, she was only exposed to English reading and written aspects. There was no opportunity to practice speaking English: "At school in my country in the middle and secondary school, you learn English, but you don't speak it. Just read and write, but the speaking was difficult. It is difficult for us to speak English" (Winnie Interview, October 2, 2018). Winnie, in this narrative, reiterated Imma's experience with English in Benin. Both women experienced a high incidence of privileging the written and reading aspects of English at the cost of speaking English. Their narratives highlighted how English learners within the francophone 166 country had limited opportunities to practice speaking English. This privileging of reading and writing resulted in limitations in speaking English that impacted Winnie's experiences in learning English. Winnie's lack of practice in spoken English did influence the Discourse communities she invested in to learn English and the tools she engaged with within these Discourse communities as she learned English in Ghana. Winnie’s English Learning Experiences in Ghana Winnie was enrolled in an ESL program to learn English. She faced the challenge of learning English within her predominantly French environment, even though she was in Ghana. Just like Joy and Imma, Winnie was surrounded continuously by Frenchspeaking friends: If I went to learn English and I came home, I spoke French with friends. Every day we use to speak French! French! French! Every day. If we start to speak English, we will speak French too. We choose to mix mix. It is like if I am around people who speak French, it can’t help me. If I am around people who speak English that will help me improve my English. (Winnie Interview, October 2, 2018) Winnie, in this narrative, reiterated a limited exposure to interacting in English. Her environment did not allow her to practice her English since all her friends spoke French and often code switched from English to French even when they spoke English. Winnie did not see this literacy practice with her friends as helpful in her English learning. Winnie was also hesitant in speaking English when she initially arrived in Ghana: "I was shy about speaking English. It is like I will say something wrong, so I was scared to speak" (Winnie Interview, October 2, 2018). In her narrative, Winnie perceived her lack of confidence in speaking English as limiting her ability to improve her English. Coupled with her previous narrative on not speaking enough English with her French- 167 speaking friends, it was evident that Winnie needed opportunities that helped her to speak and practice her English. She needed to engage in Discourse communities that used English to improve her speaking skills. Winnie's demographic and immigration background are populated with histories and experiences with English about her neoliberal ideologies on English, her future occupational goals, and her struggle to practice her English. These ideologies, goals, and frustrations will help us appreciate how and why Winnie invested in Discourse communities that used English outside her Ghana ESL classroom. Winnie’s Ghanaian Discourse Communities Using English Outside the ESL Classroom In this section, I offer a portrait of the various Discourse communities that Winnie engaged with outside her ESL classroom to learn English. I highlight the English language and literacy tools she used in these Discourse communities and how her participation in these Discourse communities shaped her investment in learning English. Winnie's Discourse Communities were both face to face and virtual. Her face to face Discourse community involved her interactions in English within the bilingual Ghanaian Discourse community and her interactions in English in her Business Administration Discourse community. Her virtual Discourse communities included interactions in digital English Discourse communities such as WhatsApp and Instagram. On WhatsApp, Winnie belonged to the CELPS (Center for languages and professional studies). This digital Discourse community shared English vocabulary and business information. She was also a member of the Herbalife Discourse community which shared 168 information on medicinal products. Winnie also engaged in the Instagram digital Discourse community. Through this community, Winnie read the information on products and texts about God and life. Winnie also engaged in Discourse communities that used English and were media based. These included watching English movies and listening to English music on YouTube. Winnie's’ Use of English Within Bilingual Ghanaian Discourse Communities Winnie's experience with English in Ghana was significant to her access to services as well as her ability to navigate multilingual spaces. Winnie was engaged in interactions with English speaking Ghanaians specifically. Winnie's interaction in English with Ghanaian traders involved a unique occurrence woven around how she communicated in English during trading. According to Winnie, traders changed prices for groceries based on how she spoke English. She recounted how she was cheated by traders at the market and paid higher taxi fares because she spoke English in a way that identified her as non-Ghanaian and a francophone person. When I went to the market, I asked about the prices of the things they are selling. If I asked: “How much?” They didn’t give me the real price. They knew that am Francophone and English is not my own. They then try to speak the local language to me and I said I don’t understand the local language. Now they know I am Francophone and they give me higher prices. Even the taxi if I went, it was the same thing. (Winnie Interview, November 2, 2018) In this excerpt, Winnie was positioned as privileged and having the ability to pay more for services based on how she spoke English with a foreign accent. The traders identified her as not being a member of the Ghanaian English-speaking Discourse community. Her ways of speaking and acting around English did not match that of Ghanaians, and she, 169 therefore, became an outsider and was treated wrongly. Winnie had also failed the test for being a member of the Twi Discourse community by not being able to communicate with them in Twi. The phenomenon of English-speaking strangers being cheated at the Ghanaian market is best understood with a better idea of the hegemonic and neoliberal ideologies in the Ghanaian community surrounding English language. As previously discussed, English is recognized as the language of the elite and education. Therefore, anyone who spoke English was marked as belonging to a higher status and wealthy enough to pay more for services. Unlike the super malls with fixed prices stamped on groceries in America, most Ghanaian local foods are sold through a bargain system. Good bargainers went home with a bag full of groceries at a lower price, and bad bargainers had empty pockets but few groceries. Traders had a way of preying on English speaking foreigners who had no knowledge of this system and hooked them up with high prices. Winnie agentively responded to this preying by positioning herself as a speaker of the native language Twi: "Like sometimes if they [Ghanaian traders] want to cheat [hike prices at the market and in taxis], I try to speak the Ghana language. I can speak small [Twi]. Now they know I am in Ghana [Ghanaian]. I learned the Twi [Ghanaian language] phrases like 'how much,' 'I want to get down here,' 'I am going to this place" (Winnie Interview, November 2, 2018). Winnie, in this narrative, agentively learned to speak Twi, one of the local Ghanaian languages, to be identified as a low-class citizen to avoid being cheated. She learned to behave in specific ways that made her become recognized as a member of the Ghanaian Discourse community, and Twi was her major tool of agency. Here, Winnie avoided practicing her English. She was aware of the privileges associated 170 with the English and Twi languages. She was positioning and repositioning herself within the English Discourse communities in Ghana based on these languages. Winnie, apart from using English with the Ghanaian traders, also communicated in English within her Business Administration Discourse community. She also sought other opportunities outside her interactions with English speaking traders to practice her English. This included watching television and movies within a media-based Discourse community. Winnie’s Use of English Within Her Professional Business Administration Discourse Community As previously stated, Winnie was enrolled in a Business Administration program. Within this program, English was the only language of communication. According to Winnie, it was very difficult to learn in the program because the English she was taught in her ESL classroom was different from the one used in the program. In the English class, I was taught just basic English. Like how to go and buy something or greet someone. Just that. But at the business school, it was very difficult for me to learn for the first time. They used business terms that I did not understand and they did not talk about in my ESL class. I was confused. It was difficult. I do not know if it is my fault. I should have learned this program in French before starting it in English. (Winnie Interview, November 2, 2018) In the above narrative, Winnie highlighted a mismatch between the English she learned at her ESL class and the English she needed to engage in her Business Administration program fully. This reiterated research findings on how English learners were often faced with a mismatch of what they learned within their ESL classrooms and what they needed to navigate the world outside their ESL classrooms (Warriner, 2015). Winnie wondered if her situation would have been different if she knew the content of her program in French. She could have probably done a transfer of knowledge, which is a unique tool that helps 171 bilinguals to negotiate to learn across languages (Baker, 2011). English language learning for Winnie was contextual and required multiple terms and codes as she moved from her ESL class to her Business Administration class. To bridge the gap between her ESL and Business Administration class, Winnie sought help from her Ghanaian English-speaking friends who were also enrolled in her program. She stated, If I have class exercise [business administration homework] and I don’t understand it, they help me to do it. They explain the terms for me to understand. They also correct my English when I speak to them. They give me more vocabulary to speak about my classwork. They help me a lot. (Winnie Interview, October 2, 2018) Winnie, in the above excerpt, highlighted how her Ghanaian friends in her class helped her to choose the right terminologies to complete her assignments and also corrected her English whenever she made a mistake. Here, Winnie's identity as a classmate and a friend helped her to get the opportunity to practice her English and be successful in her Business Administration course. Her investment in this professional Discourse community had the potential to open up opportunities for symbolic as well as material capital for her to thrive in the job market. On top of these benefits, Winnie's learning activities with her friends pushed her to learn English further. As part of her effort to seek more information and help with her English language learning and Business Administration course, Winnie inserted herself into Discourse communities that used English and also gave knowledge on Business Administration or Business in general. Most of these Discourse communities were virtual and digital-based. 172 Winnie Learning English Within the WhatsApp Digital Online Discourse Community Within the WhatsApp digital Discourse community, Winnie was a member of a language and professional studies group that shared business information and English vocabulary on WhatsApp. This group, known as CELPS (Center for Languages and Professional Studies), shared English vocabulary and information on business amongst themselves every day: "On WhatsApp… we are students. Every day, we share some vocabulary or terminology. We do something else like sharing information. If you want to know something about business or you need more English vocabulary" (Winnie Interview, December 2, 2018). Here, Winnie, through WhatsApp, was connected to other people who shared her interest in business and shared information in English. Within this Discourse community, Winnie positioned herself as an English language learner and a business student. She had the dual benefit of learning about business and also expanding on her English vocabulary. For example, Winnie shared screenshots of some of the vocabulary and information that she got from the CELPS Discourse community through WhatsApp. Information shared on the CELPS WhatsApp page included a pdf file on "The Art of Pricing"; an invitation to join business groups such as Togo business people and flyers on some ongoing business shows and activities. People also shared the correct usage of words such as “anyhow” and “somehow” on that platform. The major tool Winnie used within this Discourse community was her google translator on her phone: "I try to get the meaning from my phone. I google it not in French but English and try to understand what they are saying" (Winnie Interview, December 2, 2018). Here, Winnie 173 was engaged in a multiliteracies repertoire as she used technology and multiple languages (English and French) as mediational tools to navigate the CELPS community. Apart from the CELPS, Winnie was also a member of the Herbalife Discourse community on WhatsApp. She explained that in the Herbalife Discourse community, she learned new vocabulary and got information on new products. I am part of this group [Herbalife]. So, we share information about products …. like every day. I also discover new words there so that I can check. New words like names of some products that I don’t know even the food. I search for the meaning and try to use it if I am texting or if I am conversing with someone. (Winnie Interview, December 2, 2018) In this excerpt, Winnie is engaged in learning the everyday language and products circulating in her society. Through the Herbalife platform, Winnie learned the language used in talking about those products and other English vocabulary that may be useful in her business conversations. Winnie, in this context, was agentively grooming herself towards her goal of doing business with people in English around the world. The discourses around business and English within the digital Discourse communities served as a conduit for her to achieve her goals of learning English and doing business with people around the world. Winnie's identities as an English language learner, a business student, and a future businesswoman fueled her engagement in these digital Discourse communities. Winnie Learning English Within the Instagram Digital Online Discourse Community Another digital Discourse community that Winnie engaged with was Instagram. She offered the following details, 174 I am also using Instagram. I learn about products like wigs check the words? Also, sometimes they talk about life and what is happening outside? Yes, and texts about God. So, I read it every day. Every day I am on Instagram… Instagram in the morning if I wake up first of all! ...I am even using Instagram more than WhatsApp. It’s in English so everything is in English. I read all the words there. I memorize the word also. If I don’t know the meaning, I try to check it. (Winnie Interview, December 2, 2018) Winnie's identities as a Christian, an English language learner, and a businesswoman were significant in her engagement in this Discourse community. Within this Digital Discourse community, Winnie had access to English texts that tapped into her spirituality as a Christian and exposed her to more English vocabulary. She also got informational texts on business products as she connected with traders such as the Nigerian cloth traders. Winnie showed commitment in this daily routine of familiarizing herself in the business world, Christian life in general, and learning the right words to navigate life, which happened to include the English language. Winnie's daily engagement in the Instagram and WhatsApp digital Discourse communities was her performance of agency on becoming an English-speaking businesswoman. Apart from the digital Discourse communities, Winnie also engaged in media-based Discourse communities in which she used movies, television, and music to further her English learning. Winnie’s Media-Based Discourse Communities That Used English Winnie engaged in media-based Discourse communities that involved watching English movies and television and listening to English music on YouTube. I watch some movies if I go there [boyfriend’s house]. He writes on the paper, the words in the movie that he does not get [understand]. He puts it in a box and 175 chooses like 5 words from the box per day and try to read the word and check the meaning every day. I do the same [learning 5 words per day]. (Winnie Interview, December 2, 2018) In her narrative, Winnie explained that she watched television with her boyfriend and learned English vocabulary from that activity. She did not have a television in her home, so she went to her boyfriend's house to watch movies. Winnie, through this excerpt, was engaged in learning the everyday use of language in movies. Her identity as a girlfriend opened up opportunities for her to get access to a television to learn English vocabulary. She found her boyfriend's method of writing out vocabulary as he watched movies worth emulating. She daily accounted for five words that she had learned from movies. So, within a month, for instance, Winnie had learned about 150 English vocabulary words from watching movies and television. Apart from writing down vocabulary on papers, the google translator and subtitles were major tools that Winnie used within her media-based Discourse community. "I listen, and if I don't get it, I read the sentences on the screen and… I don't know the meaning, I check it on the google translation" (Winnie Interview, December 2, 2018). Through this excerpt, Winnie highlighted the multiple modalities that she used as she learned English from movies. She had access to sound and text simultaneously and could check for the meaning of words from her phone. Here, the enormous possibilities for learning through multiple modalities became evident as she sharpened her listening and reading skills. Winnie also went to the movie theater with her boyfriend. At the time of the second interview, she had watched “The Black Panther” which had been in release not more than a month at that time: "Last weekend, we were at the movie theater to watch "The Black Panther." I could understand most of the words" (Winnie Interview, 176 December 2, 2018). Here, Winnie was engaged in not only watching the movie for content but was also focused on the words that she was listening to. She has, therefore, engaged audio-visually as part of her effort to understand English. Winnie’s Investment in Learning English Through her engagement in various Discourse communities, Winnie's narrative on her English learning experiences suggested that her investment in learning English was closely connected to her identities (girlfriend, Christian, music lover) and her aspirations to be identified as a bilingual professional businesswoman. Her neoliberal ideology about English also fueled Winnie's investment in learning English. Winnie's ideology that English was a gate opener for better jobs back home led her to travel out of her home alone for the first time to Accra, Ghana, to learn English. Having in mind that English was an international language that was spoken across the world, Winnie saw it as worthwhile to invest in English to help her in her future goal of doing business across the globe. She agentively enrolled in a Business Administration school to enhance her academic qualifications and job skills. Overall, Winnie's daily engagement with media-based Discourse communities such as movies and the digital online Discourse communities of WhatsApp and Instagram evidenced her investment in learning English as these communities allowed her to learn English every day and anywhere. Through these Discourse communities, Winnie was hooked to the everyday use of the English language, information on products, and discourses on life in general. Winnie's narratives on her English learning experiences collectively painted a picture of the complex interplay between her identities, her forms 177 of agency, and her commitment to learning English. Chapter Summary In this section, I outlined narrative portraits of Tina, Cinthy, Makara, Joy, Imma, and Winnie as they learned English outside their respective ESL classrooms in the USA and Ghana. These narrative portraits highlighted their demographic and immigration backgrounds and unpacked the various Discourse communities they engaged with outside their ESL classrooms to learn English. The immigrant women's demographic and immigration backgrounds were populated with histories and experiences about their English learning in both their home countries and their host countries. These histories and experiences threw light on why these women engaged in certain Discourse communities to learn English. These women invested in various Discourse communities that were face to face, digital, and online or media-based depending on their goals, identities, and ideologies on English and their agentic performances. Among the Discourse communities that they engaged with, the media-based Discourse community equipped them with multiliteracy tools that made their learning flexible. These tools involved technologies such as phones and televisions; texts such as subtitles, print, audio, and visual texts; and tools such as languages, movies, google translators, and phone dictionary applications. The women's narratives on their English learning experiences collectively painted a picture of the complex interplay between their identities, their forms of agency, their ideologies on English, and their investment in learning English. In Chapter 5, cross-case analysis will be used to illuminate congruent themes across the six case studies for a 178 broader interpretation of immigrant women's literacy experiences learning English in the USA and Ghana. 179 Table 4.1. Participants’ Country of Origin, Educational Background, English Learning History, English Discourse Communities, Language and Literacy Tools and Reasons for Learning English Name Pseudonym Country of origin/ residence Chile Lives in the USA Education Makara Chile Lives in the USA BS Social Communication Cinthy Peru Lives in the USA Imma Benin Lives in BSC. Agricultural Ghana Economics Pursuing MA in Biostatistics In college ESL class Joy Ivory Coast Lives in Ghana BS in Human Resource and Communication Winnie Burkina Faso Lives in Ghana West African Senior School Certificate Pursuing a BS in Business Management Tina English Learning History Private English school at elementary, Traveled to New Zealand to practice English ESL class in the USA English Discourse Communities Business EDC English popular media (movies, tv shows) Family Spanish tutoring for English speakers Language and Literacy tools At Childcare and Elementary, English tutorial from husband’s company ESL Class BSC Industrial Elementary Engineering, MA and at the Global Supply and University Pursuing MA in ESL class Business Administration English popular media (movies, tv shows, YouTube music) Family Friends Biostatistics EDC, French tutoring for English speakers Multilingual (Spanish and English) Duolingo App Phone TV Instagram Multilingual (Spanish and English), Phone TV/movie theaters Business textbooks and lectures, YouTube Multilingual (French and English) Biostatistics software Phone Textbooks ESL class in Ghana English popular media (movies, tv-series music) Church Tutoring French to English speakers Multilingual Better job (French and English) Phone Apps (dictionary) Gospel music on YouTube Billboards Elementary and ESL class in Ghana Business EDC English popular media (movies, tv-series) English speaking social media Friends Multilingual (French Needs English to and English) be a powerful Phone Apps such as businesswoman Google translator, CELP (Center of languages and professional studies WhatsApp Instagram BS Industrial Engineering Pursuing MA in Business Communication Business EDC, English popular media (movies, music) Family Friends Church Reasons for learning English Multilingualism Better job position, (Spanish and better status English) Business Rosetta Stone software Phone TV, Family Feud and Google translator Day-to-day communication Important to learn other languages, career, and education Career and communication CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS In this section, I highlight divergent and convergent themes that surfaced from the narrative analysis of data on immigrant women learning English in the USA and Ghana. Repetitive themes that emerged from this analysis indicated that the women's investment in Discourse communities to learn English was influenced by a complex interplay of their multilingual and gendered identities as well as their agency, goals, and ideologies about English. The women in both Ghana and the USA enacted fluid and multiple identities within their English learning Discourse communities outside ESL classrooms. As part of their agency, they selected multiliteracies repertoires that helped them mediate their English learning. In the subsequent paragraphs, I discuss the findings from this study and end with discussions and implications for literacy pedagogy in adult ESL classrooms based on the research findings. A cross-case analysis of convergent and divergent themes was made in relation to the narratives of immigrant women learning English in Ghana and the USA. Particular findings that emerged across the cases that are significant to understanding the out-ofclass English learning experiences of adult ESL students included the following: 1) Participants relied heavily on English popular media-based Discourse communities that were rich in multiliteracies (i.e., American movies and reality shows such as “The 181 Kardashians”) rather than those that centered on traditional print texts; 2) learners used their gendered and multilingual identities and resources to practice their English and barter for English literacy practices with native or fluent English language speakers; 3) all learners had experiences with English (at home or in their host countries), ideologies about English, individual goals that influenced their investment in English Discourse Communities, and their enactment of fluid identities across these communities. Learning English Outside the Adult ESL Classroom: Looking Across Cases in Ghana and the USA Immigrant Women Learning English: Identities in the Making The immigrant women in both Ghana and the USA exhibited a high level of enactment of multiple identities as they engaged in various Discourse communities to learn English. Their enactment of identities involved temporary social positionings that were constructed moment to moment over time and space based on their gendered identities as women, their imagined future identities as professional workers, and their engagement with multiliteracies repertoires as mediational tools within Discourse communities. Gendered Identities as Women Tina, Cinthy, and Makara came to the USA as a result of their husbands' job relocations. English became their necessary survival tool as wives and mothers of expatriates living in the USA. Their identities as mothers specifically impacted their access to English. Tina, Cinthy, and Makara, for example, had family-oriented 182 responsibilities that were embedded in using English. Their responsibilities to “be good mothers” pushed them into spaces where they were required to use English. First, they had an additional English practice with their children since their children were immersed continuously in English at school and could speak better English. Also, Tina, Cinthy, and Makara had more opportunities to speak English since they were constantly engaging in activities that demanded their use of English for communication, such as talking with their children's teachers and doctors in English. Their goals for learning English were also woven around their need to help their children with homework and to bond with them. Tina, Joy, and Makara's English language learning had an intense relationship with their identities as mothers of nonnative English-speaking children living in predominantly English-speaking communities. They needed to devote every effort to making their families successful in their new environment. This included learning English to communicate effectively with them. Cinthy's narrative, for example, indicated that her motivation to learn English was associated with her sense of being a good mother and a hardworking wife. Gaining knowledge and resources in English for her family was part of her idea of a good woman. On the other hand, Tina, Cinthy, and Makara's identities as mothers also led them to engage in language practices geared towards the maintenance of their native languages. They were agentic about their children keeping their native languages and communicating with their families in Spanish in the house. Their language use spoke volumes on the power of women as language keepers or vice versa. This reiterates Gal's (1978) study of a bilingual Austrian-Hungarian peasant community's language learning practices. Gal (1978) found that the women in the community spearheaded language shift 183 from Hungarian to German as part of their agency to escape peasant life. This was made possible by their decision not to transmit the community's primary language to their children. McDonald (1994) also described Provencal and Breton mothers who, in the 1960s and 70s, started speaking French to their children. French for them was associated with modernity, urbanity, refinement, and higher status, while Provencal and Breton language smelled of "cow shit" (McDonald, 1994, p. 103). Also, in Constantinidou's (1994) study of language use in East Sutherland, the death of the East Sutherland Gaelic language is said to have been prompted by the fact that in the 1930s, women stopped transmitting the language to their children. Gaelic symbolized the bond with their fishing industry, which had collapsed, and they wanted to break loose from it. These studies paint such powerful pictures of women as custodians of language and wield great power and agency in the enactment of their identities as mothers and language learners. Tina, Cinthy, and Makara become such women through their narratives on how they spoke Spanish with their children in the house as part of their agency to maintain their native language. They were positioning and repositioning themselves as English language learners and native Spanish speakers as they helped their children to thrive in their new environments. Joy, Imma, and Winnie in Ghana also enacted various gendered identities as they learned English. Unlike Tina, Cinthy, and Makara, the women in Ghana were in their 20s, single, and without children. Their gendered identities were, therefore, not based on their motherly responsibilities per se but were reflected as they positioned themselves as girlfriends, good daughters, and maternal figures. These positionings gave them access or denied them access to learn English. For example, through her identity as a girlfriend to 184 an English language learner, Winnie had opportunities to learn more English by watching television and movies with her boyfriend. Joy positioned herself as a motherly figure who taught children how to speak French. By inserting herself into the Discourse community of English-speaking children, Joy equally enjoyed the access to practice her English with children like Tina, Makara, and Cinthy. Though she had limited time that she spent with the children, Joy, in her narrative, was excited about the feedback she was getting from the children on her English learning. She saw her relationship with the children as positively impacting her English learning. Imma, on the contrary, had to curtail her English learning and her goal of furthering her Education in Ghana when she positioned herself as a good daughter who had to take care of her sick mother back home. Through their narratives, Joy, Imma, and Winnie evidenced the maintenance of their French identities through their use of French within English speaking spaces. Winnie mixed French with English as she communicated with her English-speaking French friends while Joy used English to teach French to English speaking children. Imma, even though she exhibited a strong disposition towards speaking English only with her English-speaking French friends, agentively positioned herself as a fluent French speaker and teacher. Comparatively, Tina, Cinthy, and Makara had more practice with their English based on their motherly roles than Joy, Imma, and Winnie. Joy, Imma, and Winnie's lack of opportunities to speak English was further compounded as they lived in Francophone homes with French-speaking friends. Unlike Tina, Cinthy, and Makara, who could practice speaking English with their children, Joy, Imma, and Winnie only had friends who were continually engaging in French conversations. This pointed to the fact that 185 language learners with children had access to opportunities to practice their English more than those who had no children. Thus, contrary to studies on women learning English that portrayed women's gendered responsibilities as caretakers of the house as limiting their access to English language (Darvin & Norton, 2015), the narratives of Tina, Cinthy, and Makara highlighted how their identities as mothers and responsibilities as caretakers of the house, exposed them to speaking and learning more English. Joy, Imma, and Winnie, as single women without children, were rather limited in terms of opportunities to speak and practice their English. Imagined Future Identities as Professional Workers In the narratives of Tina, Cinthy, Makara, Joy, Imma, and Winnie, the identities as future professional workers emerged strongly in their process of learning English. They all wished to secure a job that could offer them prestige. This was particularly important to them since their future jobs could help them maintain or reconnect their previous prestigious positions as independent career women in their home countries. Tina and Cinthy narrated how they had been positioned as nonworkers within the USA based on their visa status and how they agentively enrolled in university programs to reposition themselves as future workers. This is because their agency to get back into the job market required their use of English. Their future identities as professional workers could be connected to their identities as career women in their home countries. Tina, Cinthy, Makara, Joy, Imma, and Winnie linked learning English with instrumental rewards. Thus, all the women in both Ghana and the USA believed that learning English indexed an economic value that would be cashed out in their future 186 careers. While the women in Ghana were aware of the job privileges that existed for English language speakers in their countries, Cinthy and Tina, in the USA, had already tasted the privileges of speaking English concerning their access to higher positions at their job places in their home counties. They did not even have to use English. They just had to know how to speak it! They had better job positions for just knowing how to speak English. Darvin and Norton (2015) suggested that learners invested in a second language to acquire a broader range of resources, which would increase their social capital. Therefore, the women's investment in their professional careers was geared towards their future identities as career women. Tina and Cinthy in the USA reported repeating degrees that they did in Spanish in English to familiarize themselves with English registers on their careers as industrial engineers. Imma and Winnie were equally enrolled in dominant English universities to acquire their needed English registers for their job. English was implicated in their process of reimagining their identities more than any other language. For example, in Ghana, Winnie was invested in learning English because she wanted to do business with people across the world. Tina also described how knowing how to speak English could shape her status in society. She could be easily identified as rich for speaking English in her home country since English was conceptualized as an expensive commodity, and only the rich could afford it. Affirming Multilingual Identities by Using Multilingual Repertoires Within English Learning Discourse Communities Participants from both Ghana and the USA used English and their home language, Spanish or French, differently across Discourse communities. Although they were highly 187 interested in learning English, they spoke their home languages or switched in between their native languages and English as they engaged in various Discourse communities. The New London Group (1996) argues that multiple languages proliferate in professional, ethnic, and national contexts. These languages become tools for the enactment of various identities across lifeworlds. Thus, as these women inhabited many lifeworlds (home, career, interest affiliation), their identities become multilayered, leading to the use of multiple registers and languages across varied Discourse communities. The women in this study, apart from using various registers and languages within the different Discourse communities, also used their native languages to barter for English literacy within bilingual Discourse communities. This was an extraordinary agentic effort on the part of the women. English language learners are often positioned within a deficit framework that limits the kinds of identities and communities that can be imagined by and for these learners. There is usually a strong unequal binary between native and non-native English speakers. The non-native speakers of English are often viewed through a deficit lens by their low proficiency in English. Instead of reproducing the native/non-native speaker dichotomy, and learning practices, these women engaged in a system of reciprocal learning in which their native languages served as linguistic capital for English language learners. While the women in the USA tutored Spanish to English language speakers, those in Ghana taught French to English speakers. This resulted in a kind of multidirectional instead of unidirectional English learning practice. In the latter, native speakers of English have always been the teachers and English language learners, students. Through their positioning as language tutors, these women challenged the 188 essentialist notions of monolingualism and dominance of English in English language learning, thereby creating hybridity and multiplicity and new imaginations of learning English in a linguistically diverse world. Language in this context has a double-edged framing for adult immigrant women. It could be used to position them as learners or teachers thereby confirming Morgan's (1998) thesis that "language is used to put people in their place and people use language to change the place in which they have been put" (p. 12). Their positionings as teachers and learners of languages were all part of their use of multiliteracies repertoires to mediate their learning within Discourse communities. In all, the women learning English in the USA and Ghana enacted fluid identities. They negotiated new subject positions at the crossroads of their past, present, and future English experiences. At the center of such positionings were their gendered identities, their future imaginations of professional worker identities and their use of multiliteracies repertoires with Discourse communities. Another significant theme that emerged in the across case analysis of the narratives of the women learning English in Ghana and the USA was their use of media-based Discourse communities to support their learning of English. Significance of Media-Based Discourse Communities’ Multiliteracies Repertoires in Supporting the Learning of English Globally Outside the ESL Classroom Though situated in different geographical locations, the adult immigrant women from both Ghana and the USA relied on media-based English Discourse communities. They used languages and tools that were multiliteracies. Within the media-based 189 Discourse communities, the adult immigrant women watched television shows such as The Kardashians, The Real, Criminal Minds, Grey's Anatomy, and English movies on television and in the movie theaters. They listened to varieties of English music (gospel, IRB, music from the 80s and 90s on YouTube). Their significant goals in engaging in the media-based Discourse community were to learn vocabulary, pronunciation, and learn the day-to-day or common English language that people on the street use. Their engagement in the media-based Discourse communities also involved the use of technologies such as phones, televisions, the internet, and tools such as google translators, phone dictionaries, and phone game applications. They also used varieties of languages such as Spanish, French, and in the Ghanaian context, sometimes the local language, Twi, to make meaning. They used digital texts such as subtitles as they watched movies and television and transcript or translated texts on their phones. These practices deviated from the traditional print literacy and conformed to the New London Group's (1996) definition of literacy in current society as multiliteracies. Multiliteracies encapsulated the critical sociocultural context of literacy within this study. It emphasized the use of multiple languages, communication channels, and media that were congruent with current social settings, technologies, and diverse languages. The new world of technology was alive in the narratives of the women in this study concerning how they learned English outside the ESL classroom. Multiliteracies afforded them the flexibility to learn English everywhere and any day as they switched their televisions on, clicked on their phones to access google translators and dictionaries, and plugged their earpieces into their phones to listen to English music on YouTube. In an ethnographic qualitative study that focused on the out-of-school literacy practices of 190 refugee students who were described as translocals, Omerbašić (2015), found that digital multimodal literacy practices were comprised not only of new technological tools such as smartphones and tablets but also included collaborative and decentralized knowledge production and consumption processes. Unlike the participants in the Omerbašić study, the adult immigrant women only used technology as tools that helped them to learn. They were consumers rather than producers of texts in terms of how they used technology in the media-based Discourse communities. Shared Investments in English Learning Despite Divergent Demographic and Immigration Backgrounds The narratives of the women learning English in both Ghana and the USA suggested that their investment in learning English was shaped by a closely tied interdependent relationship between their identities, including gender and their future professional identities as career women. Their investments in learning English were also fueled by their neoliberal ideologies about the English language. The women's narratives articulated their investment in learning English as dependent on their gendered identities as mothers, girlfriends, good daughters, and motherly figures. These identities positioned them in ways that opened up opportunities for them to practice their English. For example, Makara's level of investment in English was profoundly shaped through her gendered responsibility as a mother to three Chilean boys growing up in a predominantly English-speaking society. Her motherly duties inserted her into spaces that opened up opportunities for her to practice her English. Similarly, Winnie's narrative on her English learning experiences through her 191 engagement in various Discourse communities suggested that her investment in learning English was closely connected to her identities (girlfriend, Christian, music lover) and her aspirations to be identified as a bilingual professional businesswoman. Joy's significant indicator of her investment in learning English was her commitment to teaching French to children who spoke English in Ghana. By positioning herself as a teacher of children, Joy had opportunities to practice her English. Their neoliberal understandings of English fueled the women's investment in learning English as the commodity they needed to get jobs. This made them enroll in professional programs that used English as the sole medium of communication. For example, Winnie's investment in learning English was fueled by her neoliberal ideology about English. Winnie's ideology that English was a gate opener for better jobs back home led her to travel out of her home alone for the first time to Accra, Ghana, to learn English. Having in mind that English was an international language that was spoken across the world, Winnie saw it as worthwhile to invest in English to help her in her future goal of doing business across the world. She agentively enrolled in a Business Administration school to enhance her academic qualifications and job skills in English. Above all, the women's narrative on their investment in learning English highlighted the media-based Discourse communities as leveraging their investment in learning English as these media-based Discourse communities were embedded in multiliteracies and afforded them the flexibility to learn English daily anytime throughout and sustained their learning of English. The findings in this study supported other research studies on women learning English in terms of how they agentively invested in varied Discourse Communities based 192 on their goals, ideological perspectives on English, and their identities (Darvin & Norton, 2015). These findings also aligned with studies by Gordon (2004), Kouritzin (2000), Pavlenko (2005) and Warriner (2004) to remind us that immigrant women in English speaking countries are not helpless learners who passively await help from the majority society. They are rather able to use their linguistic and cultural awareness creatively to deal with the everyday challenges of living in a new language. This includes their use of multiliteracies that were media-based and their engagement in English Discourse Communities to advance their English learning. Specifically, multiliteracies afforded them the flexibility to learn English everywhere, and any day as they switched their televisions on, clicked on their phones to access google translator and dictionaries and plugged their earpieces into their phones to listen to English music on YouTube. This finding aligned with some aspects of the results of a study by Omerbašić (2015). Omerbašić, in an ethnographic qualitative study that focused on the out-of-school literacy practices of refugee students who were described as translocals, found that they were highly engaged with digital multimodal literacy practices. Omerbašić (2015), however, discovered that their use of digital multimodal literacy practices comprised not only new technological tools such as smartphones and tablets but also included collaborative and decentralized knowledge production and consumption processes. Unlike the participants in the Omerbašić study, the adult immigrant women in this study only used technology (phones, television, etc.) as literacy tools that helped them to learn English. Also, gendered identities, including household responsibilities, were found to be an advantage to women who were mothers in this study as they benefited from linguistic opportunities offered by domestic language events and interactions with social institutions that were 193 connected to their children (Darvin & Norton, 2015). Conclusions The narratives of the adult immigrant women learning English in the USA and Ghana highlighted a unique path of learning English outside the ESL classroom that is rarely attended to in research on adult ESL. Their English learning paths involved the negotiation of complex identities across multiple social contexts and the use of various literacy tools. Their narratives also unpacked evidence of how social and cultural backgrounds interplay when learning a second language (Pavlenko, 2002). Thus, these women, through their narratives on learning English, painted a picture of an interplay of agency as evidenced in their investment and their sense of identities within social and historical contexts in the USA and Ghana. They provided a clear picture of how they learned English in their host countries as well as the sociocultural context of their language learning. Unlike many adult immigrants who usually have low education and status within their host countries (Cho, 2015; Darvin & Norton, 2015), these women were from different immigration and educational backgrounds that were highly privileged and of high status. Therefore, their language learning trajectories were different from the typical picture depicted in most literature on adult immigrant women learning English in predominantly English-speaking communities. Their language learning trajectories were also their form of agency and their attempt to reposition themselves as privileged and of high status within their new societies. This points to a probability of continuity of identities of language learners through selective engagement in Discourse communities and multiliteracies repertoires. This supports Norton's (2013) argument that learners’ 194 identities are deeply interwoven with their socioeconomic and historical contexts. Therefore, there should be a bridge that closes the gap between their pre- and postmigration identities within adult ESL. The women's narrative on learning English is better understood through their gendered identities as mothers, wives, daughters, future career women, and their marginalized identities as nonworking immigrants in the USA in particular. Their stories claimed they had learned English through their efforts to become good mothers, girlfriends or daughters, and good career women. Their identities unfolded through the process of learning English (Menard-Warwick, 2009). Similar to the Cambodian immigrant women studied by Skilton-Sylvester (2002), their gendered identities, including marital status, were intimately tied to their investment in learning English. While it was evident that their gendered identities circumscribed the roles of mothers and women, their gendered identities opened up more opportunities for them to learn and practice more English. This was contrary to the research that prescribed gendered roles as gatekeepers for learning English for most adult immigrant women (Rockhill, 1983). In all, multiliteracies were useful in the literacy practices of the women learning English in Ghana and the USA because it provided them multiple modes such as visual (subtitles, movies) and audio texts of making meaning in English and also afforded learners convenience and flexibility to learn English almost everywhere and anytime. Adult ESL classrooms need a balance between print literacy and multiliteracies to provide a better ESL experience for all learners. Finally, the most compelling factor in the women's narratives was their neoliberal ideologies around the English language. There was a heavy presence of the 195 manifestations of English's hegemonic and colonial influences in their reasons for learning English. There is, therefore, the need for a critical engagement within the ESL classrooms that sensitize learners of the legacy of English and their need to be reflective and vital as they navigate Discourse communities to learn English. This will help create a heterogeneous and empowering environment for learning English within the ESL classroom. In the next section, I discuss the implications of these findings in adult ESL programs and also make recommendations for classroom practices that will help create a conducive learning atmosphere and better experiences for adult ESL learners. Implications and Recommendations for English Literacy Pedagogy with Adults Learning English as a Second Language This section focuses on implications and recommendations for English literacy pedagogy in adult ESL learning based on the findings of this study. I define English literacy pedagogy for adult ESL in this study as a kind of teaching and learning that engages learners' identities, their designing of their learning, and their critical and reflective thinking around language acquisition. First, I discuss that ESL learning was highly based on their identities. As such, I recommend that classrooms could be structured to support the identities and goals of language learners rather than disrupting and replacing them through monolingual language instructions and policies. Also, implications from the findings in this study were that English language learners were constructors of their learning experiences. As such, teachers should recognize them as designers rather than passive partakers of their learning experiences as they choose their 196 Discourse communities and multiliteracies repertoires as mediational tools in learning English. I further discuss how results from this study implicated that there was evidence of the hegemonic power of English as expressed through the narratives of the women. Educators, therefore, have to provincialize English language learning within the ESL classroom to create empowering environments for language learning. Motha (2014) used the term “Provincialized English” to explain a form of English pedagogy in which there is an awareness of the colonial and racial history of the English language (Motha, 2014). In the following paragraphs, I expand on these implications and recommendations. Diversity as Identity, Engagement and Transformation Effective learning engages with learner differences, as evidenced in the diverse and multilayered identities of learners (Cope & Kalantzis, 2015). Learner differences stretch from demographics (race, class, national identities) to cover life experiences, dispositions, and sensibilities. Effective language learning engages with learners’ identities by building on their lived experiences. These include their past, present, and future experiences with English. Here, learners' English backgrounds become crucial tools and resources in lesson planning and lesson delivery. As much as learners’ experiential knowledge ought to be recognized within the classroom, learners need to go through a continuum of the known to the unknown. Thus, there should be an exposure to other experiences to form new frames of understanding, interacting, and negotiating meaning across multiple contexts. Learning, therefore, becomes dynamic and transforming rather than static and repetitive, and learner identities and subjectivities become more evident within the ESL classroom. 197 Learner diversity is expressed in various forms, including the use of multiple tools to design learning experiences. Here learners bring together their various perspectives and experiences in life in a creative way through Design. Learning by Design The notion of Design in this study extends the New London Group's (1996) definition of Design as a metalanguage and a learning process in which learners can use available concepts to redesign new concepts. Design in this study is a self- paced learning in which funds and resources that are culturally, socially, and historically embedded are used as resources for learning. Thus, in the adult ESL classroom, learners should be encouraged to value or treasure their past present and future identities and experiences as useful resources in their English literacy. For example, teachers could promote ESL adult learners to use their native languages and their everyday language and experiential knowledge in the classroom, to make meaning of English texts. This allows for different emphasis and activity types that orient to students’ goals and identities. Operationalizing Design through Multiliteracies in ESL Classroom Under a sociocultural perspective of literacy, ESL students are conceptualized as not passive recipients of English instruction but rather having agency in the meaningmaking process through their use of language, tools, and their investments, in particular, English Discourse communities. Against the inert notions of acquisition, articulation, competence, or interpretation that underpin the old literacy teaching, a pedagogy of Design in adult ESL recognizes the role of agency in this process. Thus, learners should 198 be encouraged to draw on the infinite Available designs they have (their language, identities, culture, literacy tools) in the classroom. These Available designs come in different modalities such as linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, tactile, spatial, and Discourse (Gee, 1996; New London Group, 1996). This is where multimodal tools for meaning-making such as movies, computers, the internet, and phones become useful English literacy tools in addition to print texts. The ESL classroom should become a salad bowl of English literacy tools, multimodality, and multilingualism. Teachers can only prepare this recipe for English literacy if they have a good idea of what their students do concerning English literacy outside the ESL classroom. Knowing your student well enough becomes a critical aspect of the pedagogy of Design and redesign. The Redesigned: Emergence of New Meanings The Redesigned represents new resources for meaning-making in the open and dynamic play of subjectivities. One person's Designing becomes a resource in another person's universe of Available Designs. This is how the world changes as a consequence of the transformational work of Designing. Redesign refers to the notion that, although users of language may draw upon patterns of meaning that are more or less predictable, the particular combination of language and the context-specific aspect of its use will always take on new meaning, shifting in some aspect in focus, tone, or form. The findings of this study indicate that participants took up positions as language instructors instead of language learners in their bilingual English Discourse communities. As they engaged in the bilingual Discourse communities, they remade or redesigned themselves as experts in their languages, which empowered them and gave them the confidence to 199 speak English with native English speakers. Within the bilingual Discourse communities, participants were translanguaging or languaging and enacting identities as bilinguals. Translanguaging refers to the purposeful alternation of languages in spoken and written, receptive, and productive modes (Baker, 2011). Languaging is the process of making meaning and shaping knowledge and experience through language (García, 2009). It is believed that there is no such thing as language. Instead, it is through its use in a particular context that language is manifested. From this point of view, languages are not fixed sets of systems but are dynamic systems. "Languages are not fixed codes by themselves; they are fluid codes framed within social practices … It is not languages that exist, but discourses; that is, ways of talking or writing within a context" (García, 2009, p. 32). So, a language learner or language user always participates in some discursive practices that are systemic but dynamic. The use of language, therefore, varies regarding time and place, and even the same person uses the same language in different ways in different contexts. Due to this changing nature of the manifestation of language, it is regarded as a process (i.e., languaging) rather than a static phenomenon. The adult ESL classroom structure should be redesigned in a multidirectional instead of a unilateral way in which learners and teachers co-construct meaning and learn from each other. In this space, the teacher learns the language of the student as she/he also shares knowledge in English literacy with the student. This will redesign the meaning of teaching and learning in the adult ESL classroom and create an atmosphere of empowerment that will help ESL learners invest more in English. In this context, English literacy teaching and learning is not about skills and competence in English alone. Still, it is aimed at creating a kind of person, an active Designer of learning and meaning-making, with a sensibility open to 200 differences, change, and innovation. Limitations of the Study This study focused on immigrant women who were privileged and had high social status, unlike many adult immigrants researched within adult ESL programs, who usually have more limited education and less privileged status within their host countries (Cho, 2015; Darvin & Norton, 2015). Immigrating to the USA for educational and career purposes uniquely positioned the participants in this study at an advantage in terms of their investment in learning English and highlights the heterogeneous makeup of what we refer to as “adult immigrant women.” Therefore, their language learning trajectories may differ in terms of their choice of English Discourse communities, multiliteracy repertoires, and forms of agency as they engaged in Discourse communities to learn English. Therefore, the recommendations and implications of this study should not be conceptualized as prescriptive but rather as vignettes that offer a better understanding of some of the ways adult ESL learners experience and invest in learning English. This study, therefore, provides a contextual understanding of language learning and is not meant to provide a "how-to" solution to language learning across contexts and different demographic backgrounds. Thus, future research should include women from varied sociocultural, educational, and economic backgrounds to determine how differences in these parameters may influence learners’ choice of tools, investment in Discourse communities, and goals in learning English across the globe. 201 Chapter Summary In this chapter, I highlighted divergent and convergent themes that surfaced across the case studies on immigrant women learning English in the USA and Ghana. Repetitive themes that emerged from the analysis of the case studies were that the women enacted fluid and multiple identities within the Discourse communities they engaged within learning English outside their ESL classrooms. These identities were highly influenced by their ideologies and their goals for learning English. Also, these women similarly used multiliteracies repertoires as mediational tools within their Discourse communities. This included their engagement in varied Discourse communities that were media-based, their use of multilingual and multimodal texts and identities, and various technologies to learn English. The women's investments in these Discourse communities were influenced by a complex interplay of their identities, including gender, their agency, their goals, and their neoliberal ideologies about English. Particular findings that emerged across the cases which are significant to understanding the out-of-the-classroom English learning experiences of adult ESL student included the following: 1) Participants relied heavily on English popular mediabased Discourse communities that were rich in multiliteracies (i.e., American movies and reality shows such as “The Kardashians”) rather than those that centered on traditional print texts; 2) learners used their gendered and multilingual identities and resources to practice their English and barter for English literacy practices with native or fluent English language speakers; and 3) all learners had experiences with English (at home or in their host countries), ideologies about English, individual goals that influenced their investment in English Discourse Communities and their enactment of fluid identities 202 across these communities. I next focused on implications for English literacy pedagogy in adult ESL learning based on findings of this study. I defined English literacy pedagogy for adult ESL in this study as a kind of teaching and learning that engages with learner's identities, their designing of their learning, and their critical and reflective thinking around language acquisition. First, I argued that ESL learning was largely based on their identities. As such, I recommended that classrooms could be structured to support the identities and goals of language learners rather than disrupting and replacing them through monolingual language instruction and policies. Also, implications from the findings of this study were that English language learners are constructors of their learning experiences. As such, teachers should recognize them as designers rather than passive partakers of their learning experiences as they choose their Discourse communities and multiliteracies repertoires as mediational tools in learning English. I further discussed how results from this study offered evidence of the hegemonic power of English as expressed through the narratives of the women. I go on to recommend that educators provincialize English language learning within the ESL classroom to create empowering environments for language learning (Motha, 2014). Highlighting some of the limitations of this study, I conclude this chapter by proposing that future research examine English learning across different sociocultural and economic backgrounds. APPENDIX A RECRUITMENT SURVEY 204 Recruitment Survey Name: 1. In what country were you born? 2. How many years have you been in the US? (or Ghana?) 3. What language(s) do you speak/understand? 4. Are you able to have conversations in basic English without help from an interpreter? (Check your answer)  Yes  No 5. Outside of this ESL class, how else do you learn/use English? [Please mark all the answers that best describe how else you learn English outside the ESL classroom]  Online English learning software (Rosetta stone, English live, Fluent IQ, etc.)  English speaking friends  Watching, reading and listening to English movies, books and music  English speaking social/professional groups  Other (Please list them) 6. Which English speaking social/professional groups outside of this ESL classroom are you involved in? (Mark all answers that apply)  Church  Work  Online groups such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter etc. 205  Parent Group  Other (Please list them): 7. How often do you engage in these English-speaking social/professional groups? (Check the best answer)  Daily  Weekly  Monthly  Other APPENDIX B INTERVIEW GUIDE 207 INTERVIEW GUIDE Purpose: To understand women’s English experiences, their engagement in English speaking social/professional groups and activities conducted in English outside the ESL classrooms, and how these English social/professional groups and activities shape their English learning experiences. Interview I Topics: Demographics, Background, Reasons for Learning English, & the ESL Program  Section 1 Demographics & Immigration Background: Tell me about yourself. (Probe with questions such as: Where are you from? When did you move here [Arizona or Ghana]? Tell me about your move here? Did you come here by yourself? Do you like it here (explain)? Who did you know before moving here?  Section 2 Educational Background: Tell me about your education. What schools have you attended? What languages were used to teach you?  Section 3 Language & English learning Background (including current ESL program participation): What languages do you speak? Understand? Read? Write? Tell me about the different programs, groups, activities that you do to help you learn English. (Probe for examples across a typical day/week).  Section 4 Reasons for learning English: How important is it for you to learn English and why?  Section 5 ESL Program: Tell me about your English learning experience in this program. Why did you enroll in this program? How does it help you learn English? What have you liked about it? What has been frustrating? 208 Interview II Topics: Participant’s English Learning Experience Outside ESL Classroom  Section 1 Where participants use English outside the ESL classroom: Tell me about where you use English outside the ESL classroom. Probe for social, professional, spiritual, familial, educational, community experiences, events, groups and/or activities. May probe for participants to draw a map or diagram to show these. Probe further with Do some of these include English learning programs such as tutoring, foreign language institutions, summer camps, studying abroad, etc.? If yes, tell me which ones you have done.  Section 2 English language and literacy experiences outside the ESL classroom: Tell me about the ways you have used English in these places, groups, events outside of the ESL classroom. Please describe your typical English learning activities in these contexts in more detail. Probe for detailed stories and examples they may want to share of their language and literacy experiences.  Section 3 How, with who, and for what purposes English is used in activities within these settings/groups: Tell me more about [name activities mentioned previously by participant] you partake in these groups. Why and how did you start doing this activity with the group? For how long do you do this activity? How has the way you do this activity changed over time? What do you bring to help you do this activity? How do they help you? Interview III Topics: Reflections on the influence of their English learning experiences, obstacles to English learning, and vision of the future 209  Section 1 Influence of their English learning Experiences: Let’s review each of the English learning places, groups, events you described being involved in. For each of these I am going to ask you to a) tell me how much they push you to want to learn or not to learn English (3 = Toward learning English 2 = makes no difference 1=Away from Learning English) and b) why? (Go through each group, event, place, program that participant mentioned.)  Section 2 Obstacles to English learning: What, if any, are your obstacles in learning English? What do you do about these obstacles? How do these shape your English learning?  Section 3 Vision of the Future: How do you see yourself using English 10 years from now? What skills would you have? How would you use them?  Section 4 Open Comment: Is there anything I didn’t ask over the three interviews that you feel is important for me to know or that you’d like to share? Follow-up Interview(s) Topics: Clarifying and Expanding on Interview Summaries  Input on Interview Summaries: [Participants are provided with copies of interview summaries] Let’s go through the summaries together. As I read each section, I will stop and check with you to make sure it says what you told me, see if any part needs something added or changed, and then we will move to the next section until we finish. REFERENCES Abrams, D., & Hogg, M. A. (Eds.). (1990). Social identity theory: Constructive and critical advances. Hemel Hempstead, England: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Anchimbe, E. A. (2007). Multilingualism, postcolonialism and linguistic identity: Towards a new vision of postcolonial spaces. In E. A. Achebe (Ed.), Linguistic identity in postcolonial multilingual spaces (pp. 1-23). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso. Baker, C. (2011). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism (Vol. 79). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Ballenger, C. (1999). Teaching other people’s children: Literacy and learning in a bilingual classroom. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Baynham, M., & Simpson, J. (2010). Onwards and upwards: Space, placement, and liminality in adult ESOL classes. TESOL Quarterly, 44(3), 420-440. Block, D. (2007). The rise of identity in SLA research, Post Firth and Wagner (1997). The Modern Language Journal, 91(5), 863-876. Bloomberg, L. D., & Volpe, M. F. (2012). Completing your qualitative dissertation: A road map from beginning to end (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. G. Richardson, Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). New York: Greenwood. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Brock-Utne, B. (2000). Whose education for all? The recolonization of the African mind? New York: Falmer Press. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 211 Bybee, E. R., Henderson, K. I., Hinojosa, R. V. (2014). An overview of U.S. bilingual education: Historical roots, legal battles, and recent trends. Texas Education Review, 2(2), 138-146. Carr, D. (1986). Time, narrative, and history. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Center for Applied Linguistics (2010). Education for adult English language learners In the United States: Trends, research, and promising practices. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.cal.org/caelanetwork/pdfs/education-foradult-ells-with-new-copyright.pdf Cho, H.W. (2015). Emergence of new citizens and multicultural phenomenon in Korea. Focused on marriage immigrant women. The Korean Journal of Area Studies, 33(3), 235-254. Clandinin, J. (2013). Engaging in narrative inquiry. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Coleman, H. (2010). The English language in development. London, UK: British Council. Retrieved from https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/ files/UK011-English-Language-Development.pdf Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2-14. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (2006). Narrative inquiry. In J. L. Green, G. Camilli, P. Elmore (Eds.), Handbook of complementary methods in education research (3rd ed.), (pp. 477-487). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Constantinidou, E. (1994). The 'death' of East Sutherland Gaelic: Death by women? In P. Burton, K, K, Dyson, and S. Ardener (Eds.), Bilingual women: Anthropological approaches to second-language use (pp. 111-127). Oxford/Providence: Berg Publishers. Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2009). Multiliteracies: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4(3), 163-195. Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2015). The things you do to know: An introduction to the pedagogy of multiliteracies (pp. 1-36). In A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Learning by design. London: Palgrave. Crawford, J. (1992). Hold your tongue: Bilingualism and the politics of “English-only.” New York, NY: Addison-Wesley. Crawford, J. (2004). Educating English learners: Language diversity in the classroom. (5th ed). Los Angeles, CA: Bilingual Educational Services. Cumming, A., & Gill, J. (1992). Motivation or accessibility? Factors permitting IndoCanadian women to pursue ESL literacy instruction. In B. Burnaby and A. 212 Cumming (Eds.) Sociopolitical aspects of ESL education in Canada. Toronto: OISE Press. Cumming, A., & Gill, J. (1991). Learning ESL literacy among Indo‐Canadian women Language, Culture and Curriculum, 4(3), 181-200. Darvin, R., & Norton, B. (2015). Identity and a model of investment in applied linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 36–56. Darvin, R., & Norton, B. (2018). Identity, investment, and TESOL. In J. I. Liotas (Ed.), The TESOL encyclopedia of English language teaching (pp. 1-7). Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. De Fina, A., & King, K. A. (2011). Language problem or language conflict? Narratives of immigrant women’s experiences in the US. Discourse Studies, 13(2), 163-188. DeWalt, K. M., & DeWalt, B. R. (2011). Participant observation: A guide for fieldworkers (2nd ed.). Plymouth, UK: AltaMira Press. Eckert, P., & McConnell-Ginet, S. (1992). Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology, 21, 461–490. Edu-Buandoh, D. (2016). Identity and representation through language in Ghana: The postcolonial self and the other. International Journal of Society, Culture & Language, 4(1), 34-44. Edu-Buandoh, D. F. (2008). On subtractive multilingualism and cultural capital. In D. D. Kuupole (Ed.), Teaching and learning of language, culture and literature of West Africa (pp. 158-166). Cape Coast: Catholic Mission Press. Edu-Buandoh, D. F., & Otchere, G. (2012). "Speak English!" A prescription or choice of English as a lingua franca in Ghanaian schools. Linguistics and Education: An International Research Journal, 3(3), 301-309. Fortune, L. G. H. (1998). Sex-exclusive differentiation in the Karaja language of Bananal Island, central Brazil (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Lancaster, Lancaster, United Kingdom. Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality: An introduction. New York, NY: Vintage. Frye, D. (1999). Participatory education as a critical framework for immigrant women’s ESL class. TESOL Quarterly 33(3), 501–513. Gal, S. (1978). Peasant men can’t get wives: Language change and sex roles in a bilingual community. Language in Society, 7, 1–16. Gal, S. (1989). Language and political economy. Annual Review of Anthropology, 18, 213 345– 367. Gal, S. (1991). Between speech and silence: The problematics of research on language and gender. In M. DiLeonardo (Ed.), Gender at the crossroads of knowledge: Toward a new anthropology of gender (pp. 175-203). Berkeley: University of California Press. Gándara, P., Moran, R., & García, E. (2004). Chapter 2: Legacy of Brown: Lau and language policy in the United States. Review of Research in Education, 28(1), 2746. García, E. E., & Gonzalez, R. (1995). Issues in systemic reform for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Teachers College Record, 96(3), 418-431. García, O. (2009). Bilingual education in the 21st century: A global perspective. Malden, MA: Wiley/Blackwell. Gaventa, J. (2003). Power after Lukes: A review of the literature. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Gee, J. P. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses (2nd ed.). London: Taylor & Francis. Gee, J. P. (2012). Discourse and ‘the new literacy studies. In J. P. Gee & M. Handford The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 371-382). New York, NY: Routledge. Gee, J. P. (2015). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses (5th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Goldstein, T. (1995). "Nobody is talking bad": Creating community and claiming power on the production lines. In M. Bucholtz & K. Hall (Eds.), Gender articulated: Arrangements of language and the socially constructed self (pp. 375-400). New York, NY: Routledge. Goldstein, T. (1997). Two languages at work: Bilingual life on the production floor. New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter. Goldstein, T. (2001). Researching women’s language practices in multilingual practices. In A. Pavlenko, A. Blackledge, I. Piller, & M. Teutsch-Dwyer (Eds.), Multilingualism, second language learning, and gender (pp. 77-101). New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter. Gordon, D. (2004). “I’m tired. You clean and cook.” Shifting gender identities and second language socialization, TESOL Quarterly 38(3), 437–457. Graddol, D. (2006) English next: Why global English may mean the end of English as a foreign language. London, UK: British Council. 214 Gunthner, S. (1992). The construction of gendered discourse in Chinese-German interactions. Discourse and Society, 3, 167-191. Hall, S. (1997). The work of representation. In Representation: Cultural representation and signifying practices (pp. 1-13). London: SAGE. Harvey, P. (1994). The presence and absence of speech in the communication of gender. In P. Burton, K. K. Dyson, & S. Ardener (Eds.), Bilingual women: Anthropological approaches to second-language use (pp. 44-64). Oxford/Province: Berg Publishers. Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. New York: Cambridge University Press. Herbert, R. (1992). Language, gender, and ethnicity: Explaining language shift in Thongaland. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Los Angeles, CA. Hill, J. (1987). Women's speech in modern Mexicano. In S. U. Philips, S. Steele, & C. Tanz (Eds.), Language, gender, and sex in comparative perspective (pp. 121160). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Holmes, J. (1993). Women’s role in language maintenance and shift. Working Papers in Language, Gender and Sexism, 3, 5-24. Hsu, F. (2017). Resisting the coloniality of English: A research review of strategies. CATESOL Journal, 29(1), 111-132. Institute of International Education (IIE) (2018). International students by place of origin, 2016/17 & 2017/18. Washington, DC: IIE. Janesick, V. J. (2000). The choreography of qualitative research design. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 379-399). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Kachru, B. B. (Ed.) (1992). The other tongue: English across cultures (2nd ed.). Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2000). A multiliteracies pedagogy: A pedagogical supplement. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures (pp. 239-248). New York, NY: Routledge. Kanno, Y., & Norton, B. (2003). Imagined communities and educational possibilities: Introduction. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 2(4), 241-249. Kim, P. (2019). Learning Korean and imagined gendered identities in the autobiographical narratives of marriage migrant women in South Korea. Asian Women, 35(3), 69-92. 215 King, K.A. (2009). Language education policy for U.S. Spanish speakers: Paradoxes, pitfalls and promises. In J. Leeman & M. Lacorte (Eds.), Español en Estados Unidos y en otros contextos (pp. 303-23). New York: Verlag Press. Kloss, H. (1977). The American bilingual tradition. Rowley, MA, Newbury House Publishers. Kloss, H. (1998). The American bilingual tradition. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics. Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2007). A new literacies sampler. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Kouritzin, S. (2000). Immigrant mothers redefine access to ESL classes: Contradiction and ambivalence. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 21(1), 14-32. Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and woman’s place. New York, NY: Harper and Row. Larrotta, C., & Serrano, A. (2011). Adult learners’ funds of knowledge: The case of an English class for parents. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55(4), 316-325. Lewis, C., & Moje, E. B. (2003). Sociocultural perspectives meet critical theories: Producing knowledge through multiple frameworks. International Journal of Learning, 10, 1980-1995. Lewis, C., Enciso, P., & Moje, E. B. (2007). Reframing sociocultural research on literacy: Identity, agency, and power. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Linton, A. (2009). Language politics and policy in the United States: Implications for the immigration debate. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 199, 937. doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/IJSL.2009.033 Loomba, A. (2015). Colonialism/postcolonialsm: The new critical idiom. New York, NY: Routledge. Maltz, D., & Borker, R. (1982). A cultural approach to male-female miscommunication. In J. Gumperz (Ed.), Language and social identity (pp. 196-206). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. B. (2006). Designing qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Martinez, R. A. (2010). Spanglish as literacy tool: Toward an understanding of the potential role of Spanish-English code-switching in the development of academic literacy. Research in the Teaching of English, 45(2), 124–149. 216 McCracken, G. (1988). The long interview. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE McDonald, M. (1994). Women and linguistic innovation in Brittany. In P. Burton, K. K. Dyson, & S. Ardener (Eds.), Bilingual women: Anthropological approaches to second-language use (pp. 85–110). Oxford/Providence: Berg Publishing. McKay, S., & Wong, S. C. (1996). Multiple discourses, multiple identities: Investment and agency in second language learning among Chinese adolescent immigrant students. Harvard Educational Review, 66(3), 577-608. Menard-Warwick, J. (2004). “I always had the desire to progress a little": Gendered narratives of immigrant language learners. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 3(4), 295-311. Menard-Warwick, J. (2006). The words become one’s own: Immigrant women’s perspectives on family literacy activities. CATESOL Journal, 18(1), 96– 108. Menard-Warwick, J. (2009). Gendered identities and immigrant language learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Merriam, S. B. (2009). Qualitative case study research. In Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation (pp. 39-54). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Miller, E. R. (2009). Orienting to “being ordinary”: The (re) construction of hegemonic ideologies in interactions among adult immigrant learners of English. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 6(4), 315-344. Moje, E. B., & Lewis, C. (2007). Examining opportunities to learn literacy: The role of critical sociocultural literacy research. In C. J. Lewis, P. Enciso, & E. B. Moje (Eds.), Reframing sociocultural research on literacy: Identity, agency, and power. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Morgan, B. D. (1998). The ESL classroom: Teaching, critical practice, and community development. Tonawanda NY: University of Toronto Press. Motha, S. (2014). Race, empire, and English language teaching: Creating responsible and ethical anti-racist practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–93. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, 1938-. (1986). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. London: James Currey/Heinemann. Nimmon, L., & Begoray, D. (2008). Creating participatory photo novels: A classroom guide. Adult Basic Education and Literacy Journal, 2(3), 174-178. Norton, B. (2000a). Identity and language learning: Gender, ethnicity, and educational 217 change. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education. Norton, B. (2000b). Investment, acculturation, and language loss. In S. McKay & S.L.C. Wong (Eds.), English language learners in the United States: A resource for teachers (pp. 443-461). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Norton, B. (2013). Identity and language learning: Extending the conversation (2nd ed.). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Omerbašić, D. (2015). Literacy as a translocal practice. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(6), 472-481. Opoku-Amankwa, K., Edu-Buandoh, D. F., & Brew-Hammond, A. (2014). Publishing for mother tongue-based bilingual education in Ghana: Politics and consequences. Language and Education, 29(1), 1-14. Ortmeier-Hooper, C. (2013). "She doesn't know who I am": The case of a refugee L2 writer in a high school English language arts classroom. In L.C. de-Oliveira & T. Silva (Eds.), L2 writing in secondary classrooms: Student experiences, academic issues, and teacher education (pp. 9-26). New York, NY: Routledge. Osabu-Kle, D. T. (2000). Compatible cultural democracy: The key to development in Africa. Ontario: Broadview Press. Ovando, C. J. (2003). Bilingual education in the United States: Historical development and current issues. Bilingual Research Journal, 27(1), 1-24. Owu-Ewie, C. (2006). The language policy of education in Ghana: A critical look at the English-only language policy of education. In J. Mugane, J. P. Hutchison, & D. A. Worman (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 35th annual conference on African linguistics (pp. 76-85). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Owusu Ansah, L. K., & Torto, R. T. (2013). Communication of language attitudes: An exploration of the Ghanaian situation. International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World, 2(1), 65-75. Park, M. Y. (2017). Resisting linguistic and ethnic marginalization: Voices of Southeast Asian marriage-migrant women in Korea. Language and Intercultural Communication, 17(2), 118-134. Pavlenko, A. (2002). We have room for just one language here: Language and national identity in the US at the turn of the 20th century. Multilingua, 21(2-3), 163–196. Pavlenko, A. (2005). “Ask each pupil about her methods of cleaning”: Ideologies of language and gender in Americanization instruction (1900–1924). International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 8(4), 275–297. Pavlenko, A., & Piller, I. (2008). Language education and gender. Encyclopedia of 218 Language and Education, 1, 57-69. Pavlenko, A., Blackledge, A., Piller, I., & Teutsch-Dwyer, M. (Eds.) (2001). Multilingualism, second language learning, and gender. New York, NY: Mouton de Grayter. Peirce, B. N. (1995). Social identity, investment, and language learning. TESOL Quarterly, 29(1), 9-31. Peirce, B. N., Harper, H., & Burnaby, B. (1993). Workplace ESL at Levi Strauss: ‘Dropouts’ speak out. TESL Canada Journal 10(2), 9-30. Perry, K. H. (2007). Sharing stories, linking lives: Literacy practices among Sudanese refugees. In V. Purcell-Gates (Ed.), Cultural practices of literacy: Case studies of language, literacy, social practice, and power (pp. 57-84). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic imperialism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Phillipson, R. (2014, Spring/Summer). Reflections by Robert Phillipson on English in post-revolutionary Iran. From indigenization to internationalization [Review of the book English in post-revolutionary Iran. From indigenization to internationalization, by M. Borjian]. International Journal of Society, Culture & Language, 2(1), 131- 137. Phillipson, R. (2017). Myths and realities of ‘global’ English. Language Policy, 16(3), 313-331. Piller, I., & Pavlenko, A. (2007). Globalization, gender, and multilingualism. In H. Decke-Cornill & L. Volkmann (Eds.), Gender studies and foreign language teaching (pp. 15-30). Tübingen, Germany: Narr. Pillow, W. (2003). Confession, catharsis, or cure? Rethinking the uses of reflexivity as methodological power in qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(2), 175-196. Pillow, W. S. (2010). Dangerous reflexivity: Rigour, responsibility and reflexivity in qualitative research. In P. Thomson & M. Walker (Eds.), The Routledge doctoral student’s companion: Getting to grips with research in education and the social sciences (pp. 270-282). New York, NY: Routledge. Pomerantz, A. (2002). Language ideologies and the production of identities: Spanish as a resource for participation in a multilingual marketplace. Multilingua, 21(2-3), 275-302. Riessman, C. K. (1993). Narrative analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Riessman, C. K. (2008). Narrative methods for the human sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: 219 SAGE Publications. Rockhill, K. (1983). Motivation out of context: Research on participation in continuing education. Mobius, 3(1), 22 27. Said, E. (1988). “The voice of a Palestinian in exile.” Third Text, 4(3), 39-50. Saldaña, J. (2013). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Schutz, A. (1967). The phenomenology of the social world (G. Walsh & F. Lenhert, Trans.). Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press. Seargeant, P., & Erling, E. J. (2013). Introduction: English and development. In E. J. Erling & P. Seargeant (Eds.), English and development: Policy, pedagogy and glocalization (pp. 1-20). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Seidman, I. (2006). Interviewing as qualitative research: A guide for researchers in education and social sciences (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Skilton-Sylvester, E. (2002). Should I stay or should I go? Investigating Cambodian women’s participation and investment in adult ESL programs. Adult Education Quarterly, 53(1), 9-26. Spivak, G. C. (1994). Can the subaltern speak? In P. Williams & L. Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial discourse and postcolonial theory: A reader (pp. 66-111). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Spring, J. (1996). The cultural transformation of a Native American family and its tribe 1763–1995. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Stevens, G. (1986). Sex differences in language shift in the United States. Sociology and Social Research 71(1), 31–34. Tannen, D. (1990). You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation. New York: Morrow. Thorne, B., & Henley, N. (1975). Language and sex: Difference and dominance. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Tran, T., & Nguyen, T. (1994). Gender and satisfaction with the host society among Indochinese refugees. International Migration Review, 28(2), 323-337. Trinh, T. M. (2011). Elsewhere, within here immigration, refugeeism and the boundary event. New York: Routledge Warriner, D. (2004). “The days now is very hard for my family”: The negotiation and construction of gendered work identities among newly arrived women refugees. 220 Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 3(4), 279–294. Warriner, D. S. (2007). Language learning and the politics of belonging: Sudanese women refugees becoming and being “American.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 38(4), 343-361. Warriner, D. S. (2015). ‘Here, without English, you are dead’: Ideologies of language and discourses of neoliberalism in adult English language learning. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 37(5), 495-508. Weedon, C. (1987). Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. London: Blackwell. Weedon, C. (2004). Subjectivity and identity. In Identity and culture: Narratives of difference and belonging (pp. 5-21). Maidenhead, England: Open University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1994). The ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly, 28(2), 377-389. Widdowson, H. G. (1998). EIL: Squaring the circles. A reply. World Englishes, 17(3), 397-401. Willinsky, J. (1998). Learning to divide the world: Education at empire’s end. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Wolf, E. (1966). Peasants. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Wolff, H. E. (2017). Language ideologies and the politics of language in post-colonial Africa. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus, 51(1), 1-22. Wortham, S. E. F. (2001). Narratives in action: A strategy for research and analysis. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Zong, J., & Batalova, J. (2019, January 17). Immigrants from new origin countries in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Migration Policy Institute.