Chapter One:
Narratives in the Russian Classroom

In this chapter, we will outline our view of L2 narrative competence, based on the findings of our collection of natural data, and offer students and teachers a variety of activities and exercises that aim to develop learners' narrative and interpretive skills and also their metalinguistic knowledge about narration.

The chapter contains the following four sections:
L2 Narrative Competence
Narrative Genre and Narrative Structure
Evaluation and Elaboration
Narrative Cohension

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WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO TELL A STORY WELL?

Even in one’s native language telling a story is not an easy task and some of us are better storytellers than others. In another language, the task is made even more challenging by the ongoing search for the right word or the correct tense.

Many existing Russian materials offer students a variety of exercises that aim at practicing skills of description, narration, expression of beliefs and opinions, hypothesizing, explanation, and argumentation. While these exercises are useful in a lot of ways, they are often not informed by any particular conception of narrative skills, they do not engage students in reflection on cross-linguistic and cross-cultural differences in ways that let's say English and Russian speakers may tell 'the same' stories, and do not offer students structured opportunities to practice particular narrative strategies.

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