The construction of new 'student' identity, focusing on Chinese pre-sessional English learners

Identity and language attracts much interest in the relevant research communities; however the majority of existing studies focus on immigrants who have little English-learning experience before they arrive in their new countries. Their lack of experience of English learning, means they do not have many experiences of contacting with English-speakers, and then do not have suffered the evaluations, whatever acceptances or denials from English speakers. But for some Chinese students, after learning English at least for a decade, their English competence have been regarded as not qualified to enroll the Masters programme. Required to attend a pre-sessional programme which means language or identity denials from native speakers, are likely to position Chinese pre-sessional students in a community with fiercer power relations and identity struggles. The investigation of Chinese pre-sessional students' identity construction, including their views on the Chinese Academic Community and the Local British Academic Community, could draw a fuller picture of how language learners perform, negotiate and construct identities within power relations. In order to carry out this investigation, discourse analysis was used in ananalysis of data collected from an 8-week pre-sessional programme. Semi-structured interview, classroom observation and stimulated recall interview were conducted, based on participants' English-learning experience and their opinions in their processes of identity performance, negotiation and construction. The results suggest that participants' new 'student' identity construction cannot replace entirely the identities constructed in the Chinese Academic Community. In addition to the teachers' encouragement of challenging teachers' power positions in the Local British Academic Community which could be seen as teachers' give-up of own powers in the community, their not understanding or speaking Chinese would result in students' non-cooperation or problems in constructing new English 'student' identities. This would imply that educators need to focus on students' identity struggles from the perspectives of power relations.