Abstract
Digital story, featured with short and narrative personal video using images, voice, and sound effects to convey meaning, has become a powerful form for creative and engaging student projects. To exemplify whether it functions in Chinese EFL content-based classroom, this article reports on a one-year teaching project in which students were introduced to this new method and created digital stories in small groups in a content-based course in a Chinese university. The project aims to explore how digital storytelling can influence students’ motivation and efficiency in EFL learning and to what extent. Various forms of learning products were collected, including digital story videos, slides of PowerPoint, and written reports related to their process of making digital stories. Results showed that digital storytelling opened a new door for EFL learners and can be an effective way to promote students’ motivation and efficiency in EFL content-based instruction. Implications applicable to teachers of various contexts were concluded.
Highlights
Digital story, featured with short and narrative personal video using images, voice, and sound effects to convey meaning, has become a powerful form for creative and engaging student projects
“Digital storytelling changed my stereotyped impression on the way of teaching and learning completely...I had always been a reluctant student of English but this time I participated a lot and tried my best to create a better digital story with my partners ... nobody wanted to lag behind during the final presentation
I felt so proud of our group when we showed the video and shared our experiences of making such an English digital story in front of the audience...what a sense of achievement!” (One of the students said in his reflective journal, Spring 2015, translated from Chinese by the author)1 Willingness is essential and has a great influence on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning
Summary
Digital story, featured with short and narrative personal video using images, voice, and sound effects to convey meaning, has become a powerful form for creative and engaging student projects To exemplify whether it functions in Chinese EFL content-based classroom, this article reports on a one-year teaching project in which students were introduced to this new method and created digital stories in small groups in a content-based course in a Chinese university. This article tries to report on a one-year (two successive semesters) teaching project in which students learned for the first time to create digital stories in groups in a content-based course instructed in English: Talking about Chinese Culture. Student’s journal reflection at the beginning of the article convinced us of the likelihood of using digital storytelling to successfully motivate the students in their EFL learning
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