Although Applied Linguistics research now emphasizes the social over the individual, qualitative research approaches often foreground the individual. Identity, agency and autonomy have also emerged as important, but contested, constructs in sociocultural approaches to research This book addresses the current status of the ‘Applied Linguistic individual’ through contributions, from Asia, Australasia, Europe, and North and South America, that discuss the role of the individual in research from perspectives including Sociocultural Theory, Situated Learning, Imagined Communities, Complexity Theory, and Autonomy Theory. The first part of the book examines theoretical tensions between the social and the individual in their approaches, while the second part explores how they are resolved in data-based research.

Although Applied Linguistics research now emphasizes the social over the individual, qualitative research approaches often foreground the individual. Identity, agency and autonomy have also emerged as important, but contested, constructs in sociocultural approaches to research This book addresses the current status of the ‘Applied Linguistic individual’ through contributions, from Asia, Australasia, Europe, and North and South America, that discuss the role of the individual in research from perspectives including Sociocultural Theory, Situated Learning, Imagined Communities, Complexity Theory, and Autonomy Theory. The first part of the book examines theoretical tensions between the social and the individual in their approaches, while the second part explores how they are resolved in data-based research. This chapter sets out to explore some of the theoretical and empirical challenges of working within ‘the dialectic between the individual and the social; between the human agency of these learners and the social practices of their communities’.

The first part of the book examines theoretical tensions between the social and the individual in their approaches. To set the stage, the author first discusses the concept of agency as it has been interpreted within SCT. And then consider those SCT concepts borrowed into ALR, which he believes appropriately reflect the theory. The author also discusses the concepts that in his point of view have been problematically integrated into ALR. Finally, Lantolf discusses those SCT principles he sees as relevant to classroom instruction and learning that aims to develop the learners’ agency.

The first part of the book examines theoretical tensions between the social and the individual in their approaches. In this chapter the author first describes the theory, demonstrating in the process how SLT accounts for the relationship between individuals and the communities in which they learn. The second part of the chapter will draw more widely on studies of situated learning to reflect on what the theory tells us about the sub-themes of this book: identity, agency and autonomy in language learning. The author concludes by assessing some of the strengths and weaknesses of the theory for understanding the Applied Linguistic individual.

The first part of the book examines theoretical tensions between the social and the individual in their approaches. In this chapter, the author argues that the idea of participation in imagined communities can help us bridge the gap between acquisition and participation in Asian EFL settings.

The first part of the book examines theoretical tensions between the social and the individual in their approaches. The objective of this chapter is to discuss the role of identity, autonomy and agency in second language acquisition (SLA). The author argues that science and myth have much in common and whatever theory we use to try to understand any phenomenon, in our case SLA, we will be offering a metaphor, a way of seeing something in terms of another.

The first part of the book examines theoretical tensions between the social and the individual in their approaches. The argument of this chapter is that autonomy, and Applied Linguistics more generally, is legitimately concerned with the development of individuals, but this concern needs to be underpinned by a well-grounded view of the autonomous individual as a social being.

The first part of the book examined theoretical tensions between the social and the individual in their approaches, while this second part explores how they are resolved in data-based research. The research presented here in this chapter represents an attempt at ‘widening the investigative lens’ (Benson and Cooker, Chapter 1, this volume) to understand the individual’s language learning experience by simultaneously focusing on the social, cultural and historical contexts in which the learner participates.

The first part of the book examined theoretical tensions between the social and the individual in their approaches, while this second part explores how they are resolved in data-based research. This chapter reports on an ethnographically oriented study on the ways in which Finnish teenagers make sense of their everyday practices with English: where and when they encounter it and use it, what values and meanings they attach to it, and how they see themselves as learners of it. The study looks at language learning through the individual experiences of a small number of teenagers, focusing on the diversity and sharedness of these experiences (see Benson 2005).

The first part of the book examined theoretical tensions between the social and the individual in their approaches, while this second part explores how they are resolved in data-based research. In this chapter, the author discusses a study in which she attempted to apply this framework to trace the processes of L2 identity formation of two college English L2 learners in China. The study aimed to capture the changes they experienced in their L2 identities over a prolonged period in similar learning contexts. The study asked how these two learners, as individual social agents, constructed their L2 identities in the face of both the spread of English that accompanies globalization, and also the rapid changes in Chinese society.

The first part of the book examined theoretical tensions between the social and the individual in their approaches, while this second part explores how they are resolved in data-based research.This study explores how five Japanese individuals experienced one facet of their identity, their sexual identity as self identifying gay men, across differing sociolinguistic contexts. It then attempts to establish emerging commonalities across these individual accounts that illuminate the ways in which these experiences influenced their motivational investments and agency in learning English as an international language.

The first part of the book examined theoretical tensions between the social and the individual in their approaches, while this second part explores how they are resolved in data-based research. In this chapter, the author draws on two theoretical frameworks discussed by Menezes (Chapter 5, this volume ) – Complexity Theory (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008a, b) (sometimes called Dynamic Systems Theory: de Bot 2008) and Language Ecology (Kramsch 2002; van Lier 2004) – to analyse data on the language practices of transnational migrants to the United States.

The first part of the book examined theoretical tensions between the social and the individual in their approaches, while this second part explores how they are resolved in data-based research. In this chapter, the author explores an approach to sustaining professional agency and self-empowerment in this context of neoliberal reform that builds on the recent focus on language teaching as a matter of the formation, development and deployment of a teacher identity (Morgan 2004; Richards 2006; Tsui 2007; Clarke 2008).

Although Applied Linguistics research now emphasizes the social over the individual, qualitative research approaches often foreground the individual. Identity, agency and autonomy have also emerged as important, but contested, constructs in sociocultural approaches to research This book addresses the current status of the ‘Applied Linguistic individual’ through contributions, from Asia, Australasia, Europe, and North and South America, that discuss the role of the individual in research from perspectives including Sociocultural Theory, Situated Learning, Imagined Communities, Complexity Theory, and Autonomy Theory. The first part of the book examines theoretical tensions between the social and the individual in their approaches, while the second part explores how they are resolved in data-based research. In this chapter the editors of this volume recap the topics explored and conclude the reflection established.