Highlighting Life Quality Of English Language Classroom Through Narrative Language

The traditional English teaching only emphasizes the structures of sentences and the analysis of rules of grammar. Thus it leads the English language classroom lack of life. A number of studies both at home and abroad address issues about improving life quality of English language classroom. As language is the major part of language classroom, the life quality of language classroom has close relation to do with language used in classroom.The present paper aims at providing an alternative way of highlighting life quality in English language classroom. Based on the theoretical frameworks informed by Allwright's Exploratory Practice, the nature of narrative language, the function of narrative language and the categorization of narrative language, the study attempts to investigate how to improve the life quality of English language classroom by using narrative language. The study mainly addresses the following two research questions:(1) What kinds of narrative language can be used to improve the life quality of English language classroom?(2) Which aspects of life quality of English language classroom can be improved by using narrative language?The study was conducted in a Comprehensive English classroom for freshmen, taught by Mrs. Truth, a leading member of a curricular innovation. A case study was used for this research. The research methods adopted in the study were narrative inquiry, observation and interviews, etc. The data collected from a period about 4 months including class records, interviews, students' reflective journals, and so on. As a result of analyzing the above data, four kinds of narrative language can be identified in Mrs. Truth's class: 1) telling stories about teacher herself, 2) telling stories happened in the class, 3) telling teacher's own feelings and perspectives, and 4) telling curriculum stories. By using such kinds of narrative language, Mrs. Truth's class was different from other teachers'. In addition, as the major findings of this study, the functions of narrative language to the improvement of life quality of English language classroom are:...