Download or read book Why Do Midwestern University Students Study Spanish?: a Qualitative Study Exploring Ideal L2 Selves, Rooted L2 Selves and Investment written by Michelle M. Dutton and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This qualitative study explores the roles that undergraduate Spanish as a second language (L2) learners ascribe to their identities, backgrounds, sociocultural contexts, and imaginations in the development of their ideal second language (L2) selves (Dörnyei 2009), rooted L2 selves (MacIntyre et al., 2017) and investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015; Norton, 2013; Norton & DeCosta, 2018) in learning Spanish. Ideal L2 selves are theorized as learners' imaginary projections of themselves as language users in the future. Often, learners continue to learn a language to close the gap between their current L2 selves and their ideal L2 selves. An additional concept that includes aspects of power and identity in the L2 learning context is investment. Investment holds that learners learn a language with the belief that they will obtain expanded material or symbolic resources by learning the language. Nine undergraduates who had enrolled for at least one semester-long Spanish course at a large Midwestern university participated in the study. They completed a written language history describing their previous experiences learning Spanish in and out of classrooms. I then met with each participant three times over the course of one semester for individual semi-structured Zoom interviews, each of which lasted approximately 30-60 minutes. Finally, participants wrote a second narrative in which they described their future goals and aspirations regarding Spanish. Using narrative analysis techniques and a case study approach, I examined the content, context, and form of three of the participant's written and oral narratives. Narrative analysis is particularly suited to exploring ideal L2 selves, rooted L2 selves and investment due to its ability to reveal how participants discursively construct or refuse certain identities, which can in turn support or diminish the development of their L2 selves and/or their investment in the L2. In my discussion I discuss the learners' trajectories (Jackson & Seiler, 2013) and address how these concepts contribute to participants' drives to persist in learning Spanish or not as U.S. college undergraduates.