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Theoretical Analysis, Classroom Practice, Opinion Essays 

 

The Stories of My Life: A Task-Based, Oral Narrative Lesson  

for Employment Purposes for Learners with Refugee Backgrounds 

 

Li-Shih Huang 

University of Victoria 

 

Abstract 

 

This classroom practice oriented article provides the instructional framework and procedures for 

one of the sample field-tested lessons from the oral narrative units derived from the Syrian 

Learners of English for Employment in Canada (SLEEC) project (Huang, 2021, 2022). This 

sharing is intended to provide a ready-to-use lesson plan and materials for implementation in the 

classroom, as well as to inform the work of practitioners supporting learners with refugee 

experiences. 

 

Context 

 

Since the start of the Syrian civil war, more than 6.6 million Syrians have fled the country, 

making the Syrian refugee crisis one of the largest global humanitarian crises of our time. To 

date, Canada has been one of the leading countries endeavouring to resettle these refugees. From 

2014 to 2020, Syria was the top country of origin for refugees resettled to Canada (Macklin & 

Blum, 2021), with a new 2021 resettlement target set at 36,000 (Paperny, 2021). However, a 

needs assessment study involving both learners’ and instructors’ perspectives within the 

federally-funded Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program revealed 

serious concerns by both parties that LINC was not adequately addressing the language-learning 

needs and practical circumstances of learners with refugee backgrounds (e.g., Huang, 2021; 

Waisman, 2018). The multi-phase Syrians Learning English for Employment Purposes (SLEEC) 

project at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, was therefore designed to tackle these 

language-training issues (www.sleec-uvic.com). 

 

 The SLEEC program was developed from the results of a needs assessment carried out in 

2017–2018 that highlighted both instructors’ and learners’ concerns about the mismatch between 

learners’ needs and employment-related language training, and about the inadequacy of materials 

suitable for meeting those needs (Huang, 2021). As per the needs assessment data, both 

instructors and learners noted the inaccessibility of employment-purposed language training, or 

so-called “Enhanced Language Training,” for learners below the level of Canadian Language 

Benchmark (CLB) 5. The majority of offerings are targeted to the advanced level (e.g., LINC 

Employment Related Language Training offered by the Saskatchewan Intercultural Association: 

CLB Levels 7 and 8; Enhanced Language Training offered by the Toronto District School Board: 

CLB 6 or higher; LINC for Employment offered by ISSofBC: CLB 7 and 8; and the level 

specified by Settlement.org as “advanced”) (see also Zhang, 2018). Since then, changes appear 

to have been introduced by some providers in order to offer work-specific English instruction to 

learners at CLB 2 to 4 (e.g., the Helping Newcomers Work initiative by the Agincourt 

Community Services Association based in Ontario). The SLEEC program has to-date 

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http://www.sleec-uvic.com/
https://saskintercultural.org/english-language-programs/language-instruction-for-newcomers-to-canada-linc/linc-erlt/
https://saskintercultural.org/english-language-programs/language-instruction-for-newcomers-to-canada-linc/linc-erlt/
https://www.tdsb.on.ca/adult-learners/learn-english/enhanced-language-training
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implemented over 100 instructional units (see Figure 1) focused on oral communication skills 

across different proficiency levels in the course of field-testing both lessons and instructional and 

learning materials.  

 

Figure 1 

 

Sample SLEEC Lessons 

 

 
 

Empirical and Theoretical Support 

 

One of the recommendations developed through the needs assessment was to afford Syrian 

learners with refugee backgrounds opportunities to navigate often contradictory identities within 

the context of learning English for employment purposes—for instance, from being a business 

owner to needing to seek temporary employment, or from being a medical professional to 

needing to be recertified (Huang, 2021, 2022). Oral narratives, or autobiographical storytelling, 

are one way to address this need. The efficacy and applicability of storytelling in job applications 

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and professional communication have been well established (e.g., Boris, 2017, Heifetz, 2016; 

Kurnoff & Lazarus, 2021); furthermore, the skills acquired apply beyond employment. Our 

proclivity to tell stories to make sense of our world is one of the distinguishing features of being 

human. Oral autobiographical storytelling involves speakers’ sharing selected events in their 

lives and their associated feelings and reactions to those events. Indeed, narratives both as a 

phenomenon and a research methodology have generated a rich body of research (e.g., Goodson 

et al., 2017).  

 

 Given the shared experiences by Syrian learners with refugee experiences, but also 

recognizing that every learner’s experience is unique even within the broader shared experience 

of forced migration, this lesson rests on the assumption that people tend to share their 

experiences with others by narrating them. It is best introduced after the mid-way point or 

towards the end of the SLEEC program, once a sense of support and safety for experimenting 

with expressions of meaning and emotional disclosures has been firmly established. (For general 

English instructions for non-refugee learners, the lesson can be implemented earlier as a way for 

learners to get to know one another and for building a learner community.) Even so, narrating 

experiences that one has coped or is currently coping with is an inherently intricate matter and 

always deserves sensitivity in its implementation.  

 

 The lesson’s learning potential lies in the rich, multiple dimensions of oral narratives, 

namely, emotional, cognitive, and social. For the emotional dimension, narrating an experience 

may lead to different degrees of reexperiencing that event and reevoke its associated emotions, 

which in turn may intensify, lessen, or be altered during or after the narration through direct 

reappraisal, as well as reappraisal derived from gaining some temporal perspective. Narrating an 

event can neutralize traumatic inhibition (Pennebaker, 1997). However, it is by no means an 

uncomplicated process, and it has the potential to reignite trauma if it is implemented without 

self-perceived distancing and a self-defined safe space for sharing, receiving, and understanding 

personally meaningful expression and exploration (Piazzoli & Cullen, 2021). For the cognitive 

dimension, narrating life stories requires learners to explicate their experiences and translate 

them into a narrative through languaging (see Jensen, 2014). This requires the learner to 

construct the meaning of, or understand, a lived experience in a way that moves beyond the 

emotional dimension, whether vague (because of distance in time or other affective variables) or 

sharp (because of nearness in time or the intensity of the experience, for example). Finally, 

narrating life stories taps into the social dimension, which requires sharing that narrative and, by 

extension, the lived experience with someone else. Having a broader, shared refugee experience 

and, within the context of learning the target language for employment, the presence of 

empathetic others in a sense validates the learner’s reality at a fundamental level that facilitates 

sharing and understanding other interpretations of life events. Learners’ reasons for sharing, 

based on those stories that have already been shared, also typically involve these three 

dimensions: for example, reexperiencing a positive event (cognitive and emotional), informing 

others (cognitive and social), and gaining support (emotional and social). Other reasons gleaned 

from research include clarifying the meaning of a chosen event, gaining empathy, releasing 

emotions, and seeking advice (Babermas, 2018). 

 

 Reflecting on one’s past experience can also give rise to learning, which “may be defined 

as the process of making a new or revised interpretation of the meaning of an experience, which 

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guides subsequent understanding, appreciation, and action” (Mezirow, 1990, p. 1). The power of 

autobiographical narratives has also been extensively researched and argued (Goodson et al., 

2017). The method does have limitations in that the lesson design necessarily constrains the type 

of story that is allowed to emerge, following a certain chronological order or set of sequences or 

narrative stages. For those teaching advanced learners, however, removing the constraints to 

enable learners to construct their own timeline of self-selected key events in their professional 

life can be the first step toward an expanded life story as the course progresses. 

 

 Retelling a story or re-narrating stories we have read, heard, or witnessed is a common 

act. Retelling is how both fiction and non-fiction stories are passed down through the 

generations. In language teaching, the use of storytelling in various contexts and learner age 

groups has generated some empirical support for its efficacy in developing different aspects (e.g., 

vocabulary, pronunciation, and syntax) and domains (speaking, reading, listening, and writing) 

of the target language (see Lucarevschi, 2016; Peters, 2021). Re-narrating to oneself or to 

different people in small groups or outside of class can also promote fluency, syntactical 

complexity, and accuracy (e.g., Bui, Ahmadian, & Hunter, 2019). Different types of retelling are 

a form of context-embedded recycling for consolidating learning and can involve, for example, 

narrating similar events with the same theme, narrating the same event but making a different 

point, or narrating different events with the same underlying theme or point. The potential for 

narrative storytelling to induce healing, moreover, is a process that takes time and requires both 

narrators and listeners to anticipate the non-static, unfinalizable nature of narrating and 

understanding lived experiences (Goodson et al., 2017).  

 

 It is worth noting that the field-testing of the lesson included in this article did not give 

rise to learners’ sharing of experiences of trauma or violence (e.g., Waterhouse, 2016) or of 

racism, classism, or discriminatory behaviours related to employment, or even general negative 

emotions triggered by the stories they shared. Instead, the sharing generated deeply moving, 

positive emotions of pride, joy, gratitude, and aspiration (Jensen, 2014). This could be the result 

of the stage of their resettlement—most of those at CLB Stage 1 (Initial Basic Ability) have 

recently arrived or are in transition to Canada. It is also not to deny the possibility that such 

sharing could lead to unexpected directions and territories. For navigating issues related to 

trauma or violence, readers may refer to Waterhouse (2016), Earner (2018), Valenzuela (2021), 

or the materials on guidance for stress and trauma developed by the UNHCR (2019). For work 

on systemic racism and discrimination related to employment, refer to Jackson et al. (2013). The 

sections that follow describe the instructional framework and procedures. 

 

Lesson Design and Procedures 

 

Level: The lesson can be easily modified to suit learners at different proficiency levels.  

 

Suggested Timeframe: 120 minutes 

 

Goals: To create and orally narrate a personal story through identifying topics from specific 

points in time and recalling the specific events, emotions, and impact of those lived experiences. 

 

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Objectives: To develop learners’ confidence in telling their stories with descriptive details, 

mediated through objects or pictures they select to represent something meaningful from the 

past, present, and future. 

 

Instructional Framework 

 

The lesson design adheres to Long’s (2014) Task-Based Language Teaching, where task design 

starts with a needs analysis to identify target tasks for a specific group of learners—in this case, 

Syrian learners with refugee experiences. For Long, the term “tasks” refers to “real-world 

activities people think of when planning, conducting, or recalling their day” (p. 6). Through 

modifications, the target task (not the grammatical features)—in this case, storytelling—becomes 

“a series of progressively more complex pedagogic tasks,” defined as “the activities and the 

materials that teachers and/or students work on in the classroom or other instructional 

environment” (Long, 2014, p. 6, emphasis in the original). The framework uses the cycles of pre-

task (for preparing learners for doing the main task), main task (the target, real-world task), post-

task (for focusing on forms to ensure that learners “get it right in the end”), and follow-up task 

(homework for consolidating learning) (Willis & Willis, 2007, pp. 30–32). These embody the 

modified principles for developing an instructional sequence originally put forward by Nunan 

(2004), as follows: (1) scaffolding (i.e., tasks and materials provide support within the task and 

for subsequent tasks); (2) within- and between-task dependency (i.e., each task builds on those 

that have been completed); (3) context-embedded recycling (i.e., the target language is used in 

different contexts); (4) active learning (i.e., tasks are designed to engage learners through 

activities using the language); (5) integration (i.e., the lesson integrates meaning, function, and 

form); (6) creation (i.e., the lesson is designed in a way that helps learners engage in authentic 

language use); and (7) reflection (i.e., opportunities are provided for guided reflection on the 

process and/or product). 

 

Implementation 

 

This section describes the lesson procedures after the lesson was field-tested in remote learning 

mode by learners in CLB Stages I (Initial Basic Ability) and II (Fluent Intermediate Ability), 

corresponding to the Common European Framework of References for Languages (CEFR) 

Ratings A1.1 to B1.1 (Centre for Canadian Language Benchmark; ACTFL). For classroom 

teaching, teachers can use the one-page lesson plan for easy reference (Appendix A). 

 

Pre-Task Cycle: The tasks in this cycle are designed to introduce the lesson’s target task 

(storytelling) and activate the learners’ background (linguistic, content, discourse, and/or 

strategic knowledge).  

 

Pre-task 1: Ask questions to prompt learners to share their experiences with or perceptions about 

storytelling: Do/have you shared your stories with others? Why is storytelling important? Play 

the 1,000 Dream video clip to elicit what the clip is about. For more advanced learners, questions 

may include: Why is it important who tells the story? What are the pros and cons of personal 

stories told by oneself versus others? What are the benefits of storytelling? How is storytelling 

relevant to English for employment purposes (the context of the program) (e.g., Heifetz, 2016). 

 

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https://www.language.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/CLB_NCLC_Overview-of-Competencies.pdf
https://languagetesting.com/pub/media/wysiwyg/PDF/research/Alignment_of_the_ACTFL_Proficiency_Ratings_to_the_CLB_D7.pdf
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Pre-task 2: Play a video clip of an immigrant talking about her past, present, and future using the 

three items she has selected. Note that the clip is not for learners to regurgitate the language, 

format, or style used by the speaker; it is important to emphasize that people tell their personal 

stories in their own ways. Elicit from learners what the speaker talked about, and what other 

topics one could talk about in creating a story about one’s professional life (e.g., place of birth, 

family background, parents’ and siblings’ characters, interests, work and school or educational 

experiences, work history, other personal interests and pursuits, future aspirations). Write those 

items in the chat (for remote learning) or on the board (for face-to-face learning) for learners to 

draw inspirations from when they carry out pre-task 3.  

 

Pre-task 3: In three stages, have learners search for one object or photo apiece from their past, 

present, and future.  

 

(1) Past: Give learners one to two minutes to search for one object/photo from their past that 

shows something they are proud of. Record those items on Slide 1 (Appendix B). After 

learners have briefly showed their items, use Slide 2 to elicit only key words from learners to 

describe the who, what, where, when, and why. It is important to stress that they need only to 

generate key words to describe the object/photo. For a larger class size and in-person 

instruction, learners can share their items with their neighbouring peers. The slide can be a 

sharable and editable one where learners can enter their own key words.  

(2) Present: Give learners one to two minutes to search for another object/photo that is important 

to them in the present. Repeat the procedures described in (1). 

(3) Future: Given learners one to two minutes to search for a third object/photo that represents 

something they aspire to in their future. Repeat the procedures described in (1). 

 

As Ausubel (1968) once said: “The most important single factor influencing learning is what the 

learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach [them] accordingly” (p. 18). By building on and 

drawing from what the learners know, including their own language (Huang, 2021, 2022), 

completing these pre-tasks also serves to scaffold their performance of the main task.  

 

Main Task Cycle: Using the slides from the pre-task cycle, provide learners some strategic 

planning time (where they consider what they will say in terms of content and language before 

undertaking the task) to create their own narratives, as well as some online or during-task 

planning time (where they are allowed to complete the task) to enhance fluency, accuracy, or 

complexity of oral production (e.g., Skehan et al., 2012). Encourage learners to focus on the 

meaning and content they wish to express to engage their listeners. Have learners take turns 

telling their stories. As a way to build confidence, or if the lesson is implemented early in the 

course, have them first share their stories within a small group as a way to rehearse telling their 

stories in a less intimidating setting before sharing them with the class. After each one-minute 

story, use a quick question based on the learners’ proficiency level (e.g., Can you relate to the 

story? What’s one thing you like about the story? How did the story make you feel?) to 

encourage them to pay attention to others’ stories as listeners. Audio-record or have learners 

audio-record their own stories for use in the follow-up task cycle. Have each group volunteer to 

tell one story from the past, present, or future to share with the class, and make sure there is a 

story from each period (past, present, and future) for form-focused work in the post-task cycle. 

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While learners tell their stories, use Slide 3 to concurrently transcribe their oral stories. 

Alternatively, have learners draft their stories using a sharable document such as Google Docs or 

Slides to facilitate form-focused work in the post- and follow-up task cycle.  

 

Post-Task Cycle: Use the transcribed texts from the previous task cycle to do form-focused 

work. Avoid the temptation to correct all errors. Prioritize pronunciation issues that compromise 

intelligibility. Focus on common deviations that are within the learners’ level—for instance: (1) 

lexical: descriptive details and word choices (may involve lexical accuracy or diversity 

depending on level); (2) phrasal: verb tenses; (3) discourse: well-organized description of event 

sequences, transitional words or phrases to signal time shifts, or a theme-rheme analysis (theme: 

the semantic starting point for a clause or sentence; rheme: the end point or destination that 

comments on the theme) for more advanced learners (Halliday, 1994). Use the Find it, Analyze 

it, and Correct it (FAC) strategy (Huang, 2010) to elicit input from learners to make this cycle 

interactive and to facilitate the self-editing work they will do in the follow-up task. Encourage 

learners to read out their sentences (which further serves as auto-input; Ellis, 2003) when they 

revise their stories. 

 

Follow-up Task Cycle: Divide the homework into a three-level challenge to enhance learning 

outcomes. Remind learners to complete the Level 1 Challenge as soon as they are able to 

maximize the benefit of reflective learning. 

 

Level 1 Challenge: Review, Listen, and Reflect. Have learners review the lesson within 24 hours 

by viewing the videos and reviewing the slides used during the lesson before listening to their 

own oral story recorded in class. Use the reflection prompts to guide their reflection: What did 

you do well? What did you find challenging? What would you say differently?  

 

Level 2 Challenge: Refine and Record. Have learners use the form-focused slides from the post-

task to refine their own stories by applying the FAC strategy before re-recording their oral 

stories.  

 

Level 3 Challenge: Listen, Compare, Reflect, and Apply. Have learners compare the story 

recorded in class and the story they recorded to complete Challenge 2. Use prompts (e.g., What 

improvements have you noticed? What did you find challenging in revising your story?) to guide 

their reflection. Have learners retell their stories to a friend or family member. 

 

To Scale Up the Lesson: For more advanced learners, instead of using the past–present–future 

framework, have them create a timeline of major events in their lives, along with an image 

presenting each milestone. Depending on the complexity of the stories, the lesson can also be 

implemented in multiple units to enable different types of retelling. These may give rise to 

important transformative learning through exploring values, beliefs, and worldviews, and 

through autobiographical reasoning that facilitates making connections between different parts of 

the learner’s past, present, and future, leading to personal development (Habermas & Köber, 

2015). Figure 2 presents an overview of the instructional framework (Huang, 2021). 

  

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Figure 2 

 

SLEEC’s Task-Based Instructional Framework 

 

 
 

Conclusion 

 

As Clandinin and Connelly (1994), two prominent figures in the field of narrative inquiry, stated: 

“Stories are the closest we can come to experience as we and others tell of our experience. A 

story has a sense of being full, a sense of coming out of a personal and social history…. People 

live stories, and in the telling of them reaffirm them, modify them, and create new ones” (p. 

415). 

 

 With the benefits of developing cultural awareness, building a learner community, 

attending to the affective and social dimensions of learning, listening to learner voices, and 

practicing emergent, language-focused teaching that addresses learners’ needs (not needs pre-

determined by the teacher), the potential of oral narrative for telling, retelling, reliving, and 

learning from stories of personal or professional experiences is boundless. Those narratives, 

moreover, have the potential of helping learners with refugee experiences move into—and 

through—moments of learning, of transition, and of life every time they narrate a life story. 

 

Acknowledgements 

 

I would like to express my gratitude to our Syrian friends and to the SLEEC team for their 

contributions to the development and field-testing of this lesson.  

 

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Funding Statement 

 

This article is derived from the SLEEC project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities 

Research Council of Canada (Insight Grant).  

 

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refugees-who-settled-vancouver  

Waterhouse, M. (2016). Telling stories of violence in adult ESL classrooms: Disrupting safe 

spaces. TESL Canada Journal, 33(10), 20–41. https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v33i0.1244  

Willis, D., & J. Willis. (2007). Doing task-based teaching. Oxford University Press. 

Zhang, Y. (2018). A comparative study of the language content of employment-related units in 

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[Unpublished MA thesis]. University of Victoria. 

  

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https://hbr.org/2021/05/the-key-to-landing-your-next-job-storytelling
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https://www.asileproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Country-Fiche_CANADA_Final_Pub.pdf
https://www.asileproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Country-Fiche_CANADA_Final_Pub.pdf
https://reut.rs/2RhX2f7
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00403.x
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00403.x
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https://doi.org/10.33178/scenario.15.2.1
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168811428414
https://www.unhcr.org/teaching-about-refugees
https://www.edutopia.org/article/5-trauma-informed-strategies-supporting-refugee-students
https://www.edutopia.org/article/5-trauma-informed-strategies-supporting-refugee-students
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/05/02/news/two-years-ups-and-downs-syrian-refugees-who-settled-vancouver
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/05/02/news/two-years-ups-and-downs-syrian-refugees-who-settled-vancouver
https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v33i0.1244


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Appendix A 

 

One-Page Lesson Plan 

 

 

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Appendix B 

 

Sample Sharable Slides 

 

Sample Slide 1 

 
Sample Slide 2  

 
  

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Sample Slide 3 

 

 
 

 

 
The BC TEAL Journal is licensed under a 

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 

Copyright rests with the author(s). 

 

 

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

