This book relates the author's stories about how languages have
integrated her being, and defined and formed her sense of self. The
idea of writing autobiographical stories of her multilingual life
came from her long-term commitment to foreign language teaching and
from a recent, extremely rich and valuable experience teaching
English to immigrants in the U.S. While reading and studying
various aspects of second-language-related-theory -- linguistics,
psychology, anthropology, and sociolinguistics literature -- the
author realized how estranged language learners are from all the
research, speculations, hypotheses, and achievements of
scholarship.
A Russian immigrant, the author tells stories to her ESL students
to help them understand why and at what price successful language
acquisition and acculturation is realistic. Not only can students
learn from her stories which encourage discoveries about their own
behaviors or problems, but they might want to respond and tell
about their own struggles with a foreign language. By becoming
writers and interpreters of her text and by making it their own,
students can construct their own virtual texts. The stories told
throughout are those of a language learner, who is also a linguist
and language teacher. As such, they can bridge the gap between
second language research and practical teaching and learning.
Moreover, this book can help initiate language learners along with
their teachers into scholarship.
Second language teachers and graduate students preparing for a
teaching career might see this book as an illustration and
validation of the studied theory and an inner voice of their
students at the same time. Multidisciplinary by nature, it can also
be used in several college courses such as cultural anthropology,
anthropo- and socio-linguistics, sociology, multicultural
education, ethnography, bilingualism, and the study of immigrant
experience. There are numerous applications of the book in the
educational field at various levels of adult learning programs
which might be determined by the objectives and by the instructor's
vision of it in the curriculum. It is also intended as a message to
the general public and to all thinking individuals in search of
identity. It will popularize the idea of the importance of foreign
language learning, language education, linguistic literacy, and
metalinguistic awareness, of illuminating self-discovery through
the treasure of multilingual experience, capable of giving birth to
a new, sophisticated, spiritually complex and enriched
multicultural identity.
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