The Bilingual Self in the Academy: A Narrative Inquiry into the Identity Struggles of Advanced EFL Learners

Advanced English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners often exhibit a perplexing dichotomy: high fluency in informal settings contrasted with significant struggle in formal, academic contexts. This narrative inquiry study explores the identity struggles underpinning this phenomenon. Framed within social constructivism, the study investigates how six advanced EFL learners enrolled in the Department of English Literature and Linguistics at a Pakistani university narrate their experiences of navigating the conflict between their fluent ‘social self’ and their struggling ‘academic self’. Data were collected through two rounds of in-depth, semi-structured interviews and four weeks of participant journals. A thematic analysis of the narratives revealed three core themes: (1) The Imposter Self, characterised by feelings of intellectual fraudulence; (2) The Silent Scholar, reflecting strategic withdrawal to avoid perceived incompetence; and (3) Code-Switching as a Mask, illustrating the performative and exhausting nature of adopting an academic register. The findings highlight that the challenge is not merely linguistic but profoundly psychosocial, involving a complex negotiation of identity, legitimacy, and belonging within the academic community. The study concludes by advocating for pedagogical practices that explicitly address register flexibility and validate learners’ identity struggles, thereby moving beyond a purely skills-based approach to teaching academic English.