Constructing Personal Stories: The Structure and Functions of Korean EFL Learners’ Oral Narratives

Narrating a personal experience occupies an important part in human discourse behavior. According to Labov and Waletzky’s (1967) classic narrative model, an oral narrative in English typically encompasses certain components that give it the status of a well-developed story. Using this model as the frame of analysis, this study analyzed personal experience narratives told by Korean adult EFL learners to examine whether and how the stories meet the structural and functional features of a good narrative construction. The findings show that the EFL narratives largely align with the structural organization of the Labovian scheme with some variations. In particular, the syntactic properties delineated for the components of the model were employed, yet deviant manifestations were also identified as resources adopted by the learners to construct the stories. The functions of the components comprising the narrative data were similar to those prescribed in the model. Notable in the present study, however, was the prevalence of the optional components performing functions specific to EFL learners’ narratives. Based on the findings of this study, implications for EFL instruction and L2 oral narrative research are discussed.