Engaging English student teachers in a digital storytelling project for young learners

Abstract

Storytelling is one of the effective ways in developing young learners’ language skills. Previous studies have demonstrated the power of storytelling activities in providing the meaningful contexts for English student teachers to learn language while at the same time providing English student teachers with the language exposure in enhancing their listening competence. This paper reports on a seven-week class project in which English student teachers create a digital storytelling project to teach English for young learners. Participants were the English Language Education learners who take the English Storytelling course in the English for Young Learners optional course packages. Data showed that most of the English student teachers are successfully presenting digital stories. However, some English student teachers faced difficulties in producing pedagogically relevant recorded audio of the stories. Further, English student teachers perceived the technology integration into the storytelling activities is beneficial in the language learning while at the same time increasing the English student teachers’ creativity in designing the teaching and learning activities for the English student teachers’ future class. The findings also suggest that further research need to investigate the use of digital stories in another forms of software application and different level of English student teachers.