Abstract
This quasi-experimental study explores the relative efficacy of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and face-to-face picture book storytelling for promoting young EFL learners’ English word acquisition. Thirty-two young EFL learners participated in a 40-minute story session in the two aforementioned modes. Receptive and productive word gains were assessed through immediate and delayed receptive vocabulary tests and productive story recall tests. To better explain how the CMC and face-to-face settings affected the participants’ word gains, their involvement in the two types of storytelling settings was evaluated using an involvement load survey. The results show that the participants’ task involvement was higher in the face-to-face setting than the CMC setting, which led to better word gains. Within each setting, high-involvement participants’ word gain was better than that of their low-involvement counterparts. However, the difference between high-involvement and low-involvement participants was only manifest in the receptive word gains for the participants in the CMC setting, but not the productive word gains. These findings suggest that face-to-face storytelling might be the more effective setting when picture book storytelling is adopted to promote EFL young learners’ word gains, especially for receptive word gains.
Highlights
Videoconferencing, a form of computer-mediated communication (CMC), is a promising instructional medium that brings authentic language input and inter-cultural language exchange into a language classroom (Anderson & Rourke, 2005; Morgan, 2013)
This study addressed whether the use of technology leads to greater word gains compared to traditional face-to-face picture book storytelling
Every effort was made to ensure that the manner by which the picture book storytelling session was conducted was similar in the CMC and face-to-face settings; the participants were highly comparable in terms of their overall linguistic profiles and speaking proficiency
Summary
Videoconferencing, a form of computer-mediated communication (CMC), is a promising instructional medium that brings authentic language input and inter-cultural language exchange into a language classroom (Anderson & Rourke, 2005; Morgan, 2013). It has been commended for providing opportunities that are similar to face-to-face interaction for meaning negotiation between interlocutors and focus on form that facilitate second-language (L2) or foreign-language (FL) development (Akiyama, 2019; Bower & Kawaguchi, 2011; Rassaei, 2017). Limited attention has been paid to implementing videoconferencing projects with elementary school learners, in the EFL context. The impact of the actual linguistic gains arising from videoconferencing activities is rarely explored in extant studies
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