Narrative Inquiry in Language Teaching and Research

As a volume in Second Language Acquisition Series: Theoretical and Methodological Issues (edited by Susan Gass and Alison Mackey), Narrative Inquiry in Language Teaching and Research, coauthored by Gary Barkhuizen, Phil Benson and Alice Chik, is an invaluable resource for beginner researchers who desire to behold the world of learners and teachers from an interior vantage point. The ʹresearch manualʹ (p. xii) has been written in accessible language and provides ample advice (by drawing on 175 published studies and concrete examples) on the basic processes and procedures through which a narrative piece of research can be carried out and reported. The book takes a practice-to-theory approach to the presentation of its contents and aims to make the journey of narrative research less unpredictable for the novice researcher by mapping out procedures followed by established researchers in the field. In addition to a short Introduction (serving as preface), and an Index, the volume consists of six chapters covering both oral and written narrative investigation; besides, there is a chapter devoted to multimodal narratives. Except for the first chapter, other chapters begin with an introduction and end with a conclusion.