The terms ‘stories,’ ‘narratives,’

The terms ‘stories,’ ‘narratives,’ and ‘literature’ are sometimes used interchangeably in the communicative language teaching (CLT) frame- work of second language acquisition (SLA) research. ‘Story’ is perhaps understood in the broadest sense, often referring to anecdotal storytell- ing, while ‘narrative’ suggests a veneer of formality (Conle, 2003; Kiernan, 2005). Wajnryb (2003) has suggested that as ‘story moves from the individual, introspective domain to the social, more public domain, it emerges as a narrative text’ (p. 12). ‘Literature’ is most often understood to refer to pre-existing written (and sometimes cano- nical) texts, although the definition of literature has broadened, especially among SLA researchers, to mean any text of imaginative writing that can be utilized by language learners, including poetry and other non-narrative forms. According to Wajnryb, ‘experience is the raw material of story’ (p. 8). While these stories emerge from the storyteller’s lived experience, one’s personal stories are not necessarily about oneself. In this study, we have defined learners’ personal stories as short, true stories told or written by language learners using the first-person narrative voice.