Innovation in Language Learning

A group of Japanese students were asked  to write essays about discrimination and prejudice as part of an EFL academic writing class. The presentation discusses the analysis of "discrimination" and "prejudice" as social representations, examined through a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach. This is part of a study that seeks to analyze the level of naturalization of socio-culturally relevant concepts and its relationship to argument-building. Here, the first stage of this research is presented: How "discrimination" and "prejudice" are socially represented by the students in a context of EFL learning, and specifically, EFL academic writing. The results and discussion focus on the textual difficulties the students had when negotiating their identity as Japanese and their identity as English-learners.