Abstract

This study explored the relationship between identity and learning English by designing and administering a 30-item Foreign Language Identity Scale (FLIS) to 470 female participants enrolled in English courses offered at advanced levels in private institutes in Mashhad, Iran. The application of the principal axis factoring to the responses and rotating the factors resulted in extracting six latent variables, i.e., idealized society, idealized communication, idealized means, idealized opportunities, global connection, and global self-expression, explaining forty percent of variance in the FLIS. With the exception of the last, the first five factors revealed strong interrelationships among themselves and thus showed that female Iranians in Mashhad learn English by creating an identity in an idealized society in which they can acquire the means to communicate best and find the opportunity they lack, reveal and improve the personality they possess, get better jobs and connect to the rest of the world. The foreign language identity, however, seems to disappear when the learners go abroad and study at universities.

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