LAUSR

Abstract This narrative inquiry explores pre-service teachers’ first experiences of teaching EFL (English as a Foreign Language) via the personal teaching metaphors that emerged throughout this process. The field texts include visual, spoken, and written narratives gathered over the course of an academic year, which are analysed for their holistic content. The pre-service EFL teachers’ metaphors encapsulate the feelings and challenges concerning the implementation of their images of teaching and the effect of teaching experiences on their professional identities. Overall, they help the pre-service teachers not only share, but also make sense of important stages within their professional identity formation.