Construire son identité dans les récits autonarratifs – cas des apprenants en langue

The practice of self-narrative story as a research method draws on the Chicago sociological school of the 1920s, considered a reaction to the scientific positivism which promoted a quantitative approach. This method of qualitative data collection is used, among others, in sociology, psychology or psychotherapy from the 1980s onward. This kind of story is gaining popularity in education. Basically, for the researcher, it guarantees access to subjective perceptions of different phenomena; for authors, writing allows them to practise consciousness of consciousness, in the words of Desmarais & Simon (2007). The objective of this article is to present the results of a research analysing the self-narrative stories written by Polish students on their "Savoir-être (existential competence) in learning foreign languages". In the first part will be listed the particular features of this specific research method. We will also explain the concept of "narrative identity". In the second part, we will summarise the most common trends in self-perception in the context of language learning.