Institutional Repository | Satya Wacana Christian University: English Language Teaching Department Students' Identity Changes Associated With English Language Learning

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING DEPARTMENT STUDENTS’
IDENTITY CHANGES ASSOCIATED WITH ENGLISH LANGUAGE
LEARNING
Lourentius Feby Haryanto
112008032

Abstract
English is regarded as an international language and because of that, most Indonesian students
must learn English as foreign language (EFL). Considerably, learning any languages, including
English is not only a matter of the language itself. It is also related to its culture’s behavioral
norms, and culture values that commonly determine self-identity of its users. This quantitative
study investigated English Language Teaching Department students’ identity changes associated
with English language learning. The subjects were 85 English Language Teaching Department
students of Satya Wacana Christian University, obtained from a purposive sampling. The
instrument of the research was a closed-ended questionnaire about six categories of self-identity
changes based on a study conducted by Gao Yihong, Cheng Ying, ZhaoYuan, and Zhou Yan
(2005). According to literature of bilinguals’ identities, those six categories of identity changes
are: self-confidence, subtractive bilingualism change, additive bilingualism change, productive
bilingualism change, identity split change, and the last one is zero change. The results showed
that in the English Language Teaching Department of Satya Wacana Christian University EFL
context, the most prominent identity changes type occurred on the learners was self-confidence.

Keywords: Identity changes, English language learning.