Personal Narratives: A Pedagogical Proposal to Stimulate Language Students’ Writing

Main Article Content

Fredy Orlando Salamanca González

Abstract

In a public university in Tunja (Colombia), undergraduate language students mentioned that writing was important and yet, they kept at a distance from it due to its requirements. The aim of this pedagogical intervention was to find a strategy to encourage students to write and, more importantly, to feel an identity with their texts. For this pedagogical intervention, students were required to write narratives that allowed them to portray their experiences using the target language and to look for the most accurate words and descriptions. From a pedagogical perspective, writing the narratives provided the teacher with the possibility of knowing his students better and to feel an affiliation towards them.

Article Details

How to Cite
Salamanca González, F. O. (2015). Personal Narratives: A Pedagogical Proposal to Stimulate Language Students’ Writing. HOW, 22(1), 65–79. https://doi.org/10.19183/how.22.1.134
Section
Reports on Pedagogical Experiences
Author Biography

Fredy Orlando Salamanca González, Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, Tunja

Fredy Orlando Salamanca González has taught at Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia in the BA in languages program since 2010. He holds an MA in language teaching and has published papers in academic journals in Colombia and has presented in academic events.

References

Castañeda-Peña, H. (2008). ‘I said it!’‘I’m first!’: Gender and language-learner identities. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 10, 112-125.

Elliott, J. (2005). Using narrative in social research: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. London, UK: Sage.

Golombek, P. R., & Johnson, K. E. (2004). Narrative inquiry as a mediational space: Examining emotional and cognitive dissonance in second‐language teachers’ development. Teachers and Teaching, 10(3), 307-327.

Guerrero, A. L. (2011). Narrative as resource for the display of self and identity: The narrative construction of an oppositional identity. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 13(2), 88-99.

Kim, Y., & Kim, J. (2005). Teaching Korean university writing class: Balancing the process and the genre approach. The Asian EFL Journal, 7(2), 69-90.

Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In J. Helm (Ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts: Proceedings of the 1966 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society (pp. 12-44). Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.

Miyahara, M. (2010). Researching identity and language learning: Taking a narrative approach. Language Research Bulletin, 25, 1-15.

Pavlenko, A. (2008). Narrative analysis. In L. Wei & M. G. Moyer (Eds.), The Blackwell guide to research methods in bilingualism and multilingualism (pp. 311-325). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Riessman, C. K. (2003). Analysis of personal narratives. In J. A. Holstein & J. F. Gubrium (Eds.), Inside interviewing: New lenses, new concerns (pp. 331-346). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Rivas Rivas, L. (2013). Returnees’ identity construction at a BA TESOL program in Mexico. PROFILE Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 15(2), 185-197.

Rodriguez Guanume, G. A. (2013). Adolescents’ narratives: An exploration of themselves from a social literacy practice (Master’s thesis). Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, Tunja.