Applying a multimedia storytelling website in foreign language learning

Storytelling is a practical and powerful teaching tool, especially for language learning. Teachers in language classrooms, however, may hesitate to incorporate storytelling into language instruction because of an already overloaded curriculum. English foreign language (EFL) teachers in Taiwan report...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computers and education 2006-08, Vol.47 (1), p.17-28
Main Authors: Tsou, Wenli, Wang, Weichung, Tzeng, Yenjun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Computer Assisted Instruction
Elementary education
English (Second Language)
Foreign Countries
Improving classroom teaching
Instructional Improvement
Interactive learning environments
Language Teachers
Multimedia Instruction
Program Effectiveness
Second Language Instruction
Second Language Learning
Story Telling
Taiwan
Teaching/learning strategies
Web Based Instruction
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Summary:Storytelling is a practical and powerful teaching tool, especially for language learning. Teachers in language classrooms, however, may hesitate to incorporate storytelling into language instruction because of an already overloaded curriculum. English foreign language (EFL) teachers in Taiwan report additional problems such as having little prior experience with integrating storytelling into language teaching, locating appropriate stories, and lacking the cultural and language abilities to handle storytelling in English. On the other hand, researchers have demonstrated successful usages of computer and network-assisted English learning. The researchers in this study have developed a multimedia Storytelling Website to study how web-based technology can assist overcoming the obstacles mentioned above. The website contains an accounts administration module, multimedia story composing module, and story re-playing module. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of this Website in significantly facilitating teacher’s storytelling and children’s story recall processes in EFL classrooms, it was implemented in one elementary school to test its effectiveness in instruction and in resultant student learning. The results of the study support the significance and the education value of the multimedia Storytelling Website on EFL teaching and learning. If such a Website can be applied within elementary EFL classrooms, the quality of teaching and learning can be improved and students’ enjoyment and success in EFL learning may increase.
ISSN:0360-1315
1873-782X
DOI:10.1016/j.compedu.2004.08.013