6.3.2 Owen:Negative Past and Present Undesired Sel...
Owen’s biographical background
Owen was born and raised in a medium-sized city in southern China, where citizens are famous for their strong business sense and success domestically and abroad.Owen was the third child of a well-run business family.His parents as well as almost all of his relatives were doing business in China or abroad.According to Owen, his parents have tightly supervised his academic learning since his childhood, because they themselves were not able to receive good education.Their global business experiences made them realise the importance of learning and English language use.
Growing up in such a strong financially supporting family, Owen refused to ‘become a person pursuing materialism and utilitarianism’ as his parents suggested:‘I am sure that currently I just don’t want to be a person like that in spite of the fact that everything can be changed’ (Free chat 1, February 2014).Owen described himself as ‘not ambitious, not ambitious about money and not ambitious about academic achievements.I am in fact pretty satisfied with my academic achievements, although I am currently struggling with my low self-learning efficiency.I am feeling lost right now, probably because I am still on the way to adjusting myself to the new university life’.Observing from our free chats, Owen seemed like a mild, friendly but slightly stubborn person.He got along well with almost everyone, but he would not take the initial step to make friends with others.Whenever he found their life style or philosophy was different from his, he would keep a distance from them.He explained that, ‘everyone has his or her own life choice, and we need to be independent.I may be stubborn sometimes, because I rarely change my mind when I make a decision.After all, I am kind of a person following my heart’.When talking of his future goal orientation, he assertively said that:‘I am sure I will do business in the future; I therefore join in some university associations to develop my communication skills.’
Owen’s attitudinal orientation to the field
Owen starts the recount with Past experience of active classroom participation and passive learning behaviour outside the classroom， and ends it with present and future desires for teaching and learning.First， Owen judges his participation in last year’ classroom discussion ‘positively’ （积极地） and grades the event with a high scaling of time ‘always’ （总 是）.Rather than presenting what is involved in the event and how it is carried out， a detailed explanation of why ‘discussion’ （讨论） is important follows， with the signal of ‘so’ （所以）.
Next， Owen reorients to ‘my personal learning experience’ （我的个人学习经历） and appraises it as ‘unpleasant’ （不堪）.He interprets it in the record of passive learning events， that is， ‘go...library’ and ‘personal learning’， which are appraised in his use of two adverbs， ‘never’ （再也没有） and ‘mainly’ （为主） respectively.By using these two lexical items， ‘so’ （所以） and ‘otherwise’ （否则）， with contrastive scope of values， he explicitly reacts to what has been passively done， and implicitly reflects which opposed scope values should be carried forward.
Finally， Owen closes the recount with a Present and Future stage.He uses explicit Affection and Appreciation ‘I hope’ （我希望） five times to express specific desires for and probability of teaching and learning entities， including the goal-oriented homework and classroom activities， professional English writing teachers， high learning motivation and critical thinking development.The followed modal auxiliary ‘can’ （能） reveals Owen’s expectations for the probability of future teaching events.It is intensified by the comparative adverb ‘more’ （更） and various adjectives with positive Appreciation words such as ‘targeted’， ‘clear’， ‘vivid’， ‘responsible’ and ‘concrete’.The explicit negative Attitude to the teachers’ generalised explanation of theories in the classroom is found in the use of contrastive conjunctive link ‘rather than’ （而不是）.In terms of the appraisal of his own learning， Owen’s explicit negative evaluation of the past learning events， such as ‘not efficient learning’ and ‘be satisfied with completing homework’， is propagated through negation ‘not’， modal auxiliary verbs ‘can’ and ‘need’， and continuative words ‘only’ and ‘just’ to signal his appreciation of future disciplinary events like ‘search for extracurricular learning materials’， ‘deepen my thinking’ and ‘establish more meaningful goal’.
Owen’s proximity of disciplinary selves in the field of discipline
There is a distal connection between Owen’s actual past self, present undesired self and future desired self, yet meanwhile there is a positive proximal continuity of the past, present and future selves in his imagination.In his recount of disciplinary experiences in the last year, Owen includes his positive participation in classroom interaction (e.g., ‘always positively discuss’) and selfdefined negative personal learning behaviour and motivation (e.g., ‘My personal learning experience is kind of unpleasant’).His positive evaluation of classroom discussion, signaled by the conjunctive word ‘so’, reflects that he is aware of certain valued content in the context and thus he positively aligns himself to this contextual culture.While explicitly recording his passive past learning events along with clear time units, his positive future desired selves are also found in the followed explanation of what should be done (e.g., ‘so...otherwise’).However, it is important to notice that, similar to Leona’s recount above, Owen’s future desired selves are largely established on the expectations for teaching and homework tasks.This somehow reinforces Oyserman and Markus’s (1990a) finding that adolescent’s possible disciplinary selves are largely shaped by school and extracurricular activities.Also, it indicates that these first year students are less sensitive to specific contextual values than the students from the senior years, which will be explored below.