A narrative task is one in which le

A narrative task is one in which learners produce a story within the framework set up by the task. In practice, this usually means retelling a story provided by the researcher, teacher, or textbook. Typical stimuli are picture sequences, video or audio recordings, or written texts. In research and testing, storytelling tasks are popular, because narrative is a useful medium for eliciting extended speech from learners (e.g. Skehan, 2001). In EFL textbooks, storytelling tasks tend to be restricted to lessons on the past tense, incorporating simple discourse conjunctions such as and then, so, or after that. However, narrative tasks are also potentially opportunities to prepare learners to tell stories in the outside world.