While reading for today, I kept flashing back to when I was a child and the ways I would attempt to play with language – mainly through poetry and my little 8 year old rants in my journal. I then considered the ways I began intertwining Spanish and English, trying to find my place in both. Reflecting back, I think I was attempting to develop some sort of power role that I could exert in my monolingual classrooms (I wonder how that would have come across in any of the “games” mentioned in the readings for today). I never considered any of that play. I did, however, recall the many Saturday mornings I’d wake up early just to play Donkey Kong and Mario Bros on our new Nintendo, and while that was certainly play, I, again, didn’t consider the role of language and negotiation when playing with my adoptive father who’d speak primarily in Spanish to me during two player games and perhaps the impact that had on my language development – oral and literate. Jumping forward 20 years, my interests in the role of “play” in second language development is certainly budding. I wonder how ESL/multilingual students would respond to a task such as the one Daisley discusses: what personas would they take, would they continue to focus on form or venture over to meaning? how would negotiation play out if this occurred between a NS and NNS versus two NNS? Would a different identity emerge than the one they hold to in their L1? would they feel empowered at all? would ownership of a language that isn’t their Mother Tongue take root?