Real World' is the Context that so many in the Field of Language Teaching Are Urging to Explore

Roxanne ends the analysis of her three personal stories by commenting on her experience of writing them during the course

. I have come to leam how to continuously identify problems in my teaching beliefs and practice and... to reflect always on my past learning/ teaching experiences and think of how I can make the needed changes in order to become a better language teacher in the future. Our collaborative narrative inquiry, therefore, was productive for her. She became aware of the importance of critical reflection and meaning making when writing her story; reflection which brought together the three contextual dimensions of place Audemar Piguet Replica (her west African country of origin, South Africa, different schools and classrooms), time (past, present, and future) and the many social interactions in which she engaged (with inspectors, colleagues, students), as well as reflection which spanned the three levels of story, Story, and STORY.

Although I have presented only Roxanne's experience of our narrative inquiry in this article, Betty too found the experience useful. In her analysis of her narrative writing she remarks: From doing this narrative exercise I have learnt a lot about what it is that motivates my interest in language teaching? My past plays a huge role in the decisions that I have made and it is amazing to see how teachers from my high school years have had such an influence on my growth and interest in language education.... Another reality thanks to this exercise is that my personal values have surfaced. It is evident that I am in a place of transition in my life where all the puzzle pieces have not been put together. I am in the process of doing that though. Betty was a pre-service teacher with no English teaching experience. However, this extract clearly shows that through her narrative reflections she has begun to interpret and understand her current development as a language teacher. She does this particularly by making connections to her past experiences as a language learner in high school.

I suggest that contextual explorations through narrative similar to those of Roxanne and Betty would be equally productive for other English teachers working in different contexts. Roxanne and Betty constructed, shared, and analysed their stories as part of a course assignment requirement, but they could just as easily have done so as practising teachers in their own schools away Tag Heuer Grand Carrera Replica from the constraints of any assessment. The same applies to other English teachers. There are many ways that they could do this: they could write their teaching life histories; they could record in story form significant or problematic teaching and learning events in their classrooms; they could relate to each other in scheduled conversations the desires, fears, expectations and personal meanings they experience in their daily teaching lives. By doing so they would necessarily engage with the context of their teaching, and through the telling, re-telling, and interpretation of their stories they might begin to 'impose order and coherence on the stream of experience and work out the meaning of incidents and events in the real world' (Carter 1993: 7). This 'real world' is the context that so many in the field of language teaching are urging us all to explore.

Real World' is the Context that so many in the Field of Language Teaching Are Urging to Explore

By: endeavor19

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