Storytelling for Learning and Healing: Parallel Narrative Inquiries in Language Counselling

In the Autonomous Language Learning Modules (ALMS) programme at the University of Helsinki Language Centre, language counselling is the primary pedagogical medium in a self-directed degree-required English course. Storytelling and sharing stories is central to the practice of counseling: students tell stories in counselling to make sense of their language learning pasts and presents and take charge of their futures. Correspondingly, much research in ALMS has been narrative inquiry (Karlsson, 2013, 2015; Bradley & Karlsson, 2017) with counsellors engaging with their own stories and those of their students and peers in order to develop their professional practice. In this article, two ALMS counsellors—Leena Karlsson and Fergal Bradley—present parallel practitioner inquiries which explore the narrative nature of counselling and the learning that occurs on ALMS courses. The inquiries both explore ideas of learning and healing and the role storytelling plays in these processes. Fergal’s inquiry takes inspiration from the practice and research of narrative-based medicine, and he uses this as a starting point for examining the different narratives of learning that students recount in counselling. Leena’s inquiry focuses on the narrative of one particular student, wounded by language anxiety, and how telling his story in counselling and through reflective writing has helped him begin the process of healing. Both inquiries emphasise the power of narrative knowing in the practice and research of language counselling and language learning.