Invested learning
By Michael Rabbidge - Materials Writer
Students choose to learn another language for many reasons. This choice can often be described as an investment (Darvin & Norton, 2021) in language learning. And as with any investment, students have expectations about what their investment will return for them.
One reason why students invest in learning another language is that they imagine joining a new community, and that in order to join that community they need to be able to communicate with the members of that community. These communities can be other cultures or countries that the student may wish to join, they can be communities of work that they aspire to, or they can be more techno-global in nature.
One component of that journey to the imagined community of the student is the classroom community. As part of their investment, students will invest their time and money in joining, and attending, classes where they imagine they will become members of a community that is fully committed to learning the new language. If things work out as they imagine, students will continue to make that investment on a daily basis, but if the community of practice within a given classroom is less than they expected, they may choose to withdraw aspects of their investment, such as willingness to participate. This occurs when students feel the practices of the classroom do not meet their own expectations.
Returns on a language learning investment can take many forms (Bourdieu, 1986). These can include acquiring capital in the form of employment. Obviously, work leads to income. Another form of return on a language learning investment is capital in the form of cultural artefacts. These include certification of education which can be converted into other forms of capital, such as employment. A third form of return is the capital that can be acquired from forming networks associated with the newly acquired language. These networks have ever-increasing value in a more techno-global society, as physical restrictions that limited contact between people now often don’t exist to the same degree. All forms of capital that are acquired from a student’s investment in learning a new language are dynamic in nature, meaning that they are easily convertible into other forms when required.
The shifting nature of the capital acquired from such a language learning investment ultimately impacts upon the developing language identity of the learner. When degrees are acquired, perceptions of self, and how others perceive the student, change. Likewise, with newly obtained employment, these perceptions of self are subject to change, just as they are when students begin to associate with new members of different communities. Thus, investing in a learning a new language is a life changing decision for many.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 96-111). New York, NY: Greenwood Press.
Darvin, R., & Norton, B. (2021). Investment and motivation in language learning: What's the difference? Language Teaching, 1-12. doi:10.1017/S0261444821000057