English and Me: The Fact of Learning English in Constructing Learners' Identity

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of learning English towards students' viewpoint about their identities. With regard to the perception that learning a language cannot be separated from also learning its culture, the researchers believe that it may affect the shaping process of the students' identities. Identity term was examined in terms of a description of a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations (such as: national identity and cultural identity). As English Department students in SWCU are learning English, there is an assumption of phenomenon that they tend to mix their mother tongue or L1 with English in their daily conversation. Therefore, based on that phenomenon, we want to find out how learning English construct the students' identity. Our data were taken from the open-ended questionnaires we distributed for 100 English Department students of four Angkatan (2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010) as our participants. The study addresses the following question: How does learning English affect English Department students' identities? Our findings from this study indicate that although most of the participants are positively influenced by English, they do not change their viewpoint about their identities as Indonesian