Reframing the L2 learning experience as narrative reconstructions of classroom learning

Phil Hiver,Yuan Sang,Yang Zhou,Gabriel Obando,Somayeh Tahmouresi,Ashlee Zhou

doi:10.14746/ssllt.2019.9.1.5

Phil Hiver, Yuan Sang + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.14746/ssllt.2019.9.1.5

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Abstract

In this study we investigate the situated and dynamic nature of the L2 learning experience through a newly-purposed instrument called the Language Learning Story Interview, adapted from McAdams’ life story interview (2007). Using critical case sampling, data were collected from an equal number of learners of various L2s (e.g., Arabic, English, Mandarin, Spanish) and analyzed using qualitative comparative analysis (Rihoux & Ragin, 2009). Through our data analysis, we demonstrate how language learners construct overarching narratives of the L2 learning experience and what the characteristic features and components that make up these narratives are. Our results provide evidence for prototypical nuclear scenes (McAdams et al., 2004) as well as core specifications and parameters of learners’ narrative accounts of the L2 learning experience. We discuss how these shape motivation and language learning behavior.

Highlights

A longstanding emphasis within the field of language learning and use is a focus on contextual and relational features of the second language (L2) classroom and the learning experience, aspects which are thought to play a key part in initiating and sustaining L2 learning motivation
We do this first by highlighting prototypical, self-defining, nuclear scenes – highly significant stand-alone scenes actively retrieved by the learners, that revolve around the most important concerns and conflicts in one’s life, and which provide the individual with a better understanding of both themselves and others or the world (McAdams et al, 2004) – and examining their themes revealed through our analysis of the dataset
Borrowing from established research designs of life-narrative research in psychology, we demonstrated how language learners construct overarching narratives of the L2 learning experience and what the characteristic features and components that make up these narratives are

Summary

Introduction

A longstanding emphasis within the field of language learning and use is a focus on contextual and relational features of the second language (L2) classroom and the learning experience, aspects which are thought to play a key part in initiating and sustaining L2 learning motivation (see e.g., Joe, Hiver, & Al-Hoorie, 2017). We set out to re-theorize the language learning experience using insights from McAdams’ integrative life narrative dimension (McAdams, 2012) This framework originates in the work of scholars who proposed a narrative model of psychology and individual differences (see McAdams & Pals, 2006), and it has more recently been adapted as a novel framework for individual differences research in the psychology of language learning (Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015). Our primary objective in developing such a study was to investigate the situated and dynamic nature of the L2 learning experience By undertaking such a study we aimed to develop insight into individuals’ own representations of their pathways of development and language. I will guide you through the interview so that we finish it all in just over an hour

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