This study focuses on understanding how three adult English learners, studying in a language institute in Rio de Janeiro, co-construct their identities in narratives that emerged in research interviews with the teacher-researcher. The aim is to observe: how they position and construct themselves as learners and users of English; how they feel positioned and position other participants in their stories and how they position the teacher, the school and other students. The research conceptualizes the field of Applied Linguistics as a way of creating intelligibilities in pedagogical contexts. Adopting a post-structuralist view of identity, the stories told are considered opportunities for identity construction. The research methodology is qualitative and interpretive; the transcribed data consist of three thirty-minute autobiographical interviews. We infer from the first interview that the learner identifies herself as someone who fears English, but who associates her sense of achievement and empowerment to developing a good command of the language. The second interview points to the ambiguities of an individual positioned between the contradictions of being chased by English and a criticism of what it means, in his opinion, to know English in Brazil. In the third interview, English is strongly idealized in the experience of a learner who positions herself between the feelings of enchantment and deference towards the language. Finally, this dissertation highlights the fact that identity positionings of English learners are of great relevance for enhancing the field s understandings of language teaching and learning processes.