The Applied Linguistic Individual - Sociocultural Approaches to Identity, Agency and Autonomy - Phil Benson
5 Chaos and the complexity of second language acquisition
The Applied Linguistic Individual - Sociocultural Approaches to Identity, Agency and Autonomy - Phil Benson
Vera Lucia Menezes de Oliveira Pavia [+]
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
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Vera Menezes, PhD in Linguistics and former president of ALAB (Brazilian Association of Applied Linguistics), is a full professor of Applied Linguistics at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, one of the most important universities in Brazil. She is also the editor of ALAB's journal, Revista Brasileira de Linguistica Aplicada.
Description
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.