On the Application of Narrative Frames in the Exploration of English Language Teachers’ Scenarios of Maintaining Willingness to Communicate

One of the main aims of narrative inquiry in language teacher education is to gain a deeper understanding of the experiences of teachers in their situated teaching process. The application of narrative frames, and narrative grounded theory in particular, in the field of applied linguistics is in its fledgling state. Thus, this paper reports on the use of narrative frames as a means of examining the teaching experiences of English language teachers in Iran. This study used six specifically designed narrative frames to collect data from 21 teachers teaching English in the language institutes of Bojnord to explore their scenarios regarding their strategies to maintain and build willingness to communicate (WTC) among their learners. Sixty four complete sets of the four frames were collected and analyzed via a paradigmatic approach typical of qualitative content analysis to explore common scenarios among the teachers frames. These scenarios were then rated as high WTC and low WTC by 112 learners all of whom were among the participating teachers’ students who were randomly selected. The classification of high and low WTC scenarios was finally showed to the participating teachers of the study to give their comments. Most of the teachers suggested that collecting their teaching experiences via narrative frames can be a better representation of their teaching experiences than collecting data by questionnaires or interviews.