Communication and Identity in the EFL Classroom

The EFL language classroom is both a preparatory micro-community for teaching and learning communicative strategies, and a multicultural community in and of itself. As such, it is a space where ambiguities related to identity and self-expression can arise, creating the potential for uncertainty, discomfort, or precarious experiences among teachers and students. However, when addressed appropriately, these ambiguities can provide opportunities to embrace descriptive and expansive understandings of identity. Marginalized individuals can be especially sensitive to tensions arising from ambiguity, but everyone benefits from developing their awareness of diversity among individuals, (sub-)cultures, and identities, and from learning to strike a balance between compassionate curiosity and tolerance for ambiguity.

In this session, I will demonstrate my use of autoethnography as a tool to contextualize moments of ambiguity that I have experienced as a result of my own visible and invisible facets of identity. I will describe the impact of these analyses on my pedagogy as a teacher in an EFL context in Japan. I will discuss possible awareness-raising strategies and suggest activities for developing multicultural awareness across and among diverse identities, and participants will be invited to consider their own experiences inside and outside the language classroom as starting points for the development of activities encouraging multicultural communication.