Identity alignment on an ESOL class blog

This paper concerns a multilingual adult learner of English, Shahedah, and her written interaction on the class blog of her English language course. Lesson observations revealed that the pedagogic use of the blog did not enable the development of new learner identity positions for students in Shahedah's class, often cited as an affordance of electronic media in language learning contexts. Moreover conventional classroom hierarchies were reproduced in interaction on the blog. Comprising an analysis of online written discourse, spoken interaction and life history interview, this study examines how blog interaction displays identity alignment - that is, identity positions offered and claimed online align with those in other learning contexts. Shahedah aspires to further study, and the paper points to implications of electronic media for academic literacy.