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Every day, ESL teachers make many decisions in their classrooms about language teaching/learning processes. These include decisions about which activities their learners might possibly enjoy, which are most effective, and which would provide learners with skills that they could use for academic and communicative purposes. The learners, however, are seldom involved in this decision‐making process. I argue in this article that they should be. I report on a study that investigated high school ESL learners' perceptions of the language teaching/learning activities they encountered in their classes. Using multimethod, qualitative research procedures, I discovered that the perceptions of these learners often surprised their teachers. I recommend that teachers constantly monitor their learners' perceptions of classroom life. Once they are aware of them, they can, if necessary, plan and implement alternative practices. Finally, I suggest ways in which this can be done.

In the realm of storytelling I'm a little more at ease, and since stories, unlike scientific formulations, don't expect (reject, in fact) clear-cut answers, I can muddle around in this territory without feeling bullied into providing solutions or advice. Alberto Manguel (2007) Putting together this special-topic issue involved numerous rounds of abstract and article reviewing. Many people have given very generously of their time and expertise to ensure that this process has been thorough and systematic. It has been a pleasure working with them. I would like to thank the following reviewers for their excellent work, especially

This book weaves together three ideas: second language identity, narrative, and study abroad. It provides case study narratives of one graduate, seven undergraduate, and two secondary students from Hong Kong studying overseas for periods ranging from ten days to two years. Unfortunately, it lacks "thick descriptions" of when the informants made their statements, who they were communicating with, how the data was coded, or even how the informants were selected. As such, I feel it is of limited value in terms of research methodology. However, this text does provide a useful overview of some of the theoretical ideas that are currently used to explain how (and why) many persons studying abroad change in terms of the ways they see themselves and the world around them. Let me briefly examine some of its core concepts, then evaluate the text overall.

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In this article the researcher reports on a longitudinal study which investigated the imagined identities of a preservice English teacher in New Zealand and compared these with the identities she negotiated in her teacher education and then teaching practice nearly nine years later. The teacher, an immigrant from the Pacific Island of Tonga, imagined herself working amongst members of her immigrant community but ended up teaching English at a privileged high school. The researcher used a short story analytical approach to analyze her narratives. Short stories are excerpts of data extracted from a larger set of data such as conversations, interviews, written narratives, and multimodal digital stories. In this case, short stories from a series of interviews were analyzed for both their content and the varying scales of context in which the short stories were constructed and interpreted. The analysis is informed theoretically by recent developments of the concept of investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015). The researcher includes reflexive personal commentary on his own positioning throughout the article, which concludes with suggestions for the use of short story analysis in teacher reflection and research.

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Narrative research in language teaching and learning (LTL) is concerned with the stories teachers and learners tell about their lived and imagined experiences. Teachers typically tell about their professional development and their practices, and learners about their experiences of learning and using languages. What stories are, and indeed what narrative research is, however, remains far from agreed upon in LTL research. There is no single, all-encompassing definition of narrative (research), probably because the same situation exists in other disciplines from which empirical work in LTL draws its theoretical and methodological assumptions and approaches. Stanley & Temple (2008: 276), for example, say that generally there is ‘little shared sense of core concerns, of approach, and even of what narrative is seen as’. In LTL, narrative, whether as text/artefact, method of analysis, or both, has become a popular catchall term for much activity in qualitative, interpretive research which focuses on the experiences of research participants. In other words, it has been appropriated by researchers who exhibit varying degrees of epistemological commitment to narrative, and this is evident in the design and reporting of their research.