Off-campus UMass Amherst users: To download dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your UMass Amherst user name and password.
Non-UMass Amherst users, please click the view more button below to purchase a copy of this dissertation from Proquest.
(Some titles may also be available free of charge in our Open Access Dissertation Collection, so please check there first.)
Ethnic identity and acculturation: A sociocultural perspective on peer editing in ESL writing
Abstract
In this dissertation, peer editing as one pedagogical practice in ESL writing is studied from a sociocultural perspective. Such a perspective has been neglected in the previous research in the field. In this study, the theories of the self, the ethnic identity and the acculturation are examined and an ethnographic study reported. The study suggests that pedagogical practices such as peer editing in ESL writing are also sociocultural practices. We cannot fully understand ESL teaching and learning if we ignore the sociocultural aspects and concentrate only on linguistic, psychological, and cognitive aspects. Using Mead, Bakhtin, Freire, and MacIntyre's theories, I have constructed a theoretical framework for my research in critique of the previous sociocultural theories on ESL acquisition. This theoretical framework has three interrelated components: a non-essentialist theory of the self, a non-ethnocentrist theory of ethnic identity, and a theory of acculturation as pluralistic cultural coexistence and amalgamation. Of these three components, the most important is the constructing and ever changing of a person's ethnic identity, which in turn could have a strong impact on transforming the social world. My ethnographic study, which has been conducted in four ESL writing classes in a college on the West Coast, suggests that students' interaction in peer editing helps students enact their ethnic identity and acculturate into the multicultural American society. Telling and retelling their stories in peer editing, student writers and readers reach out to each other as narrative selves and narrative others. Together, they use the stories to give their life-world meaning. Peer editing not only could help students understand their past and present, but could also help them to choose the actions they want to take to transform themselves and their life-world.
Subject Area
Bilingual education|Communication|Ethnic studies|Language arts
Recommended Citation
Shi, Xiaowei, "Ethnic identity and acculturation: A sociocultural perspective on peer editing in ESL writing" (1993). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9408348.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9408348