Using Digital Stories to Improve Listening Comprehension with Spanish Young Learners of English

JOURNAL SUMMARY

TITTLE	:	Using Digital Stories to Improve Listening Comprehension with Spanish Young Learners of English
AUTHOR	:	Dolores Ramírez Verdugo and Isabel Alonso Belmonte
PUBLISHER	:	Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain)

The emergence of digital storytelling has inspired many teachers and instructors in both schools and courses to develop the teaching materials. Digital storytelling has emerged over the last few years as a powerful teaching and learning tool that engages both teachers and their students. However, until recently, little attention has been paid to a theoretical framework that could be employed to increase the effectiveness of technology as a tool in a classroom environment. A discussion of the history of digital storytelling and how it is being used educationally is presented in this article. The theoretical framework, technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK), is described, along with a discussion of how this model might be used with digital storytelling.

Digital storytelling is a technology application that is well-positioned to take advantage of user-contributed content and to help teachers overcome some of the obstacles to productively using technology in their classrooms. At its core, digital storytelling allows computer users to become creative storytellers through the traditional processes of selecting a topic, conducting some research, writing a script, and developing an interesting story. This material is then combined with various types of multimedia, including computer-based graphics, recorded audio, computer-generated text, video clips, and music so that it can be played on a computer, uploaded on a web site, or burned on a DVD.

This paper examines the effects that digital stories may have on the understanding of spoken English by a group of 6-year-old Spanish learners. To accomplish this aim, a quasi-experimental research study was launched in six state schools in Madrid. A pre-post-test design was used to investigate whether internet-based technology could improve listening comprehension in English as a Foreign Language (henceforth, EFL). Findings indicate that the experimental group outperformed the control group in the final test administered. These results raise interesting issues related to the use of technology in the context of foreign language learning. Future research which includes other age groups and digital materials and which explores other linguistic areas could further substantiate the link between Information and Communication Technology (ICT) rich environment and improved language learning.

During the days in which the tests were administered, 9 students in the control groups and 3 learners in the experimental ones were absent. The total sample then was reduced to 103 students in the control groups and 105 in the experimental ones. To analyze quantitative data, a T-test for independent samples was applied in order to compare the listening comprehension of the two groups of subjects. Results obtained by Levene test indicate that there was homogeneity of variances between the control and the experimental groups (F = 1.124; p = 0.290) at onset. Thus, there were no significant differences among the participating groups at the start of the study.