Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education by Nat Bartels

88 CONSTRUCTING THEORETICAL NOTIONSgo back and then continue the travel. But the most important lesson I learned is thatevery student is riding in a different ‘train caboose’ (writing phase).In this reflection, the participant has changed her view of writing as an inflexible,straightforward movement directed by the teacher to recursive, multiple-stop movementdirected by the own learner.The act of reflecting on metaphors throughout the course and, in particular, the socialprocess of sharing and considering classmates’ metaphors was critical for the students toprogress within their ZPDs. As they wrote and shared their metaphors and reflections,the participants “learned from each other” (Samuel). For Myrna, the metaphor exerciserepresented a personal growing experience. In Entry 5, she voiced her realization thatshe had always viewed writing as “a complicated process that can cause headaches andfrustration.” She had always been “afraid to write.” This view was expressed in her firstentrymetaphor of the writer as solver of a 500 piece puzzle and of the teacher as anexpert puzzle maker who knows and can fix everything. Her new metaphors (writer asartist and teacher as art teacher) offer a “totally different” view: “Writing is not cold . . .difficult or frustrating anymore. Writing is creation now. Writing metaphors [in theclass] was very important. Metaphors created by the students allow them to realize howthey view things.”Pat renders an eloquent account of her progress throughout the course and the impactof metaphor in her reconceptualization process:My concept about the writing process has evolved through this semester. I used to see itas a way students had to produce texts that evidenced their skills in the language. I usedto focus on the final product. I wanted perfection and accuracy from the very beginning .. . . I never even thought of asking my students for more than the final, polished versionof their writing . . . . As I participated in class discussions about the chapters in the book Irealized how much I had to change as a teacher. There were moments when I felt badabout the harshness with which I had graded my students. As the semester progressed sodid my concepts of teaching writing . . . . The thing that helped me most in this growingprocess was the exercise on metaphors. By looking at [my classmates’] list of metaphorsI could venture an analysis of each participant’s style of teaching. Those metaphorsreflect who we are as teachers and what we think about our students. The metaphors [Iadopted] reflect the way I see myself now as a writing teacher.CONCLUSIONSThe 15-week long exercise on metaphorical conceptualization resulted in a variety ofrealizations that helped the teacher trainees understand, clarify, reconsider, expand,and/or change their own concepts of learning and teaching writing. Through metaphor,participants were able to link different conceptual domains to arrive at a betterunderstanding of the ESL writer and teacher. Metaphors helped connect prevailingconcepts of writing and pedagogical approaches as participants imagined themselvesteaching from a particular metaphor or tried to identify with correspondingstances/paradigms. Through metaphor, they were able to recognize their classmates’style of teaching or their perspectives of writing and teaching writing and expanded their