DESAHOGARSE: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVES WITH EMERGING BILINGUALS

Abstract

Emerging bilinguals, or English Language Learners, come to the United States for a better life, un futuro mejor, yet they do not always find a better life when they arrive. Immigrant students come to U.S. schools and have to manage not only learning a new language, but the emotions of leaving behind a former life, family, and more while building a new life in a foreign land. This practitioner inquiry narrative study examines how high school emerging bilinguals navigate their lives as language learners while documenting their life stories through autobiographical narratives. Autobiography collection was via instructional practices and guided by the theoretical foundation of asset-based pedagogies, Funds of Knowledge, and New Literacy Studies. This study shows how autobiographical narratives within language instruction can help students reflect on their situations as they move forward with their transnational lives. The sources of data collected were observational notes, bilingual student writing and multimodal representations, bilingual individual recorded conversations, and bilingual group recorded conversations. Thematic analysis guided data analysis, with restorying used to share data. The three emerging themes were difficulty integrating, struggles of transnationalism, and hope for the future. The students’ shared stories, narratives, and perspectives indicate how knowledgeable emerging bilinguals, how reflective they are as individuals, and how they desperately need to be “heard” by the entire educational community. Recommendations include further research using emerging bilingual autobiographies and in language instruction and educators’ need to listen to and know their students.