Form of Narratives Used by Inexperienced Teachers in L2 Classroom Discourse

Abstract

Despite the fact that the kinds of experiences that teachers have had might help us to understand why they hold the views they do, the presence and contribution of narratives of personal experience in second language classroom discourse has received little attention. In an effort to fill this gap in the field, this study focuses on the use of narratives of personal experience in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom contexts by Iranian teachers to show what the form of their narratives are. This study is theoretically based on the constructionist theory of narrative analysis which deals with how narrative is produced. The present study is qualitative in nature in that it seeks to document, analyze, and interpret naturally occurring data in the EFL classroom settings. The participants were two EFL teachers, teaching general English courses in a private language institute in Babolsar, northern Iran. To collect the required data for this study, the first researcher observed the classrooms as a non-participant and made audio-recordings from three lessons of each teacher (resulting in 12 hours of naturally occurring data). The audio-recordings were then analyzed. In this way, the data were first transcribed and then the narratives in them were identified. Through an analysis of narratives of personal experience, this study has made a start at understanding the contribution such narratives make in an institutional context.