Construction and Validation of an Identity Scale for English Language Learners

Abstract

Although the language pedagogies of private institutes are sharply different from those of the public curriculum, scant research has been done on the identity formation of English language learners in these institutes. To fill this niche, first, a literature-driven identity scale was developed, which consisted of the eight components of learning, belongingness, expectations, motivations, attitudes, agency, learning activities, and relationships. Next, the scale was administered to Iranian English language learners of a leading private institute. The dataset collected from 338 learners was found to be appropriate for running exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and reliability estimation. The EFA results showed that the items loaded on five factors: (a) linguistic investment, (b) belongingness, (c) expectations, (d) attitudes, and (e) agency. It was also found that the scale had a high level of internal consistency. It is concluded that the construct of English language learner identity has its distinctive context-specific conceptualization within the pedagogical frames of private institutes.

Keywords

• english language learners
• learner identity
• learner identity scale
• linguistic investment
• private language institutes