The Technique of Personal Narrative in the EFL Classroom – Re-discovered and Newly-Applied
The Technique of Personal Narrative in the EFL Classroom – Re-discovered and Newly-Applied

Summary/Abstract: This article is an attempt to revive the personal narrative – not as a research method, which it used to be, but rather as a teaching technique in the EFL classroom. The reason why is that students when confronted with the foreign language, in order to understand it, have to make it part of their personal experience and what better way of achieving that than letting them talk themselves into it. Unlike understanding based on logical and abstract thinking, characteristic for the mathematical model of learning, where natural phenomena are extracted from their context and put into categories, the narrative understanding is basically a process of explaining based on events in real time and place. Phenomena, events or a foreign language for that matter, can be integrated into the environment referred to as life in general. The most important advantage of the personal narrative in EFL is that students learn to understand reality in the foreign language as well, and as much, as in the native language. Therefore, after a short overview of the personal narrative as a research method, this article will suggest applicable and implementable ways of integrating the personal narrative into the teaching methodology of EFL.

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