Digital storytelling and the use of various movie-making tasks have become popular in language and literacy pedagogy in the United States. For my presentation at TESOL 2012, I focused on adding an EFL perspective by presenting examples of digital stories in English classrooms from a digital storytelling group at a university in Southern China. My aim was to demonstrate the usefulness of digital stories in diverse language-learning settings.

During the session, I first offered a summary of recent research looking into the use of digital stories as an effective task for teaching the four basic skills of speaking, writing, reading, and listening (Davis, 2005; Hull & Nelson. 2005; Lambert, 2002; McPherron & Nowicki-Clark, 2010; Meadows, 2003; Vinogradova, Linville, & Bickel, 2011). Next, I played two sample stories written and produced by the Chinese students in my story group. In particular, I pointed out the seven elements of effective digital stories as outlined by Lambert (2002): point of view, dramatic question, emotional content, voice, soundtrack, economy, and pacing. Using these elements as part of the story writing process helps students to focus their stories and consider important aspects of multimodal storytelling. For simplicity, when I facilitate digital story groups, I often narrow the seven elements into point of view, audience, voice, economy, and shape, and I instruct students to consider these elements when making decisions about which visual and audio elements to include in their stories.

At the end of my TESOL 2012 talk, I summarized surveys and interviews with student story authors and teachers about their experiences using the stories as learning projects. One student commented, “And I’ve learned that you have to be always thinking how to tell [your] story no matter where you go. I haven’t had that sense before this class.”

Overall, the presentation emphasized the unique aspects of using digital stories as language-learning projects. In addition to practicing the four traditional language skills, students learn and practice critical thinking skills and become proficient consumers of digital media. Further, teachers can use the digital stories produced by students in one group as content for listening and speaking activities in other classes, in this way drawing on local student language use and providing a variety of pronunciation and language models for students. For more information on digital storytelling projects and ESL teaching, see the resources below.

SELECTED WEB RESOURCES ON DIGITAL STORYTELLING

http://creativenarrations.net

http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/

http://www.storycenter.org/

REFERENCES

Davis, A. (2005). Co-authoring identity: Digital storytelling in an urban middle school. THEN Journal, 1. Retrieved April 21, 2010, from http://thenjournal.org/.

Hull, G., & Nelson, M. (2005). Locating the semiotic power of multimodality. Written Communication, 22(2), 224-261.

Lambert, J. (2002). Digital storytelling: Capturing lives, creating community. Berkeley, CA: Digital Diner Press.

Meadows, D. (2003). Digital storytelling: Research-based practice in new media. Visual Communication, 2, 189-193.

McPherron, P., & Nowicki-Clark, J. (2010). “You have to always be thinking about how to tell your story”: English learners and digital stories at a south Chinese university. In Thao Le & M. Short (Eds.), Language and literacy education in a challenging world (pp. 303-317). New York: Nova Science Publishers.

Vinogradova, P., Linville, H., & Bickel, B. (2011). ‘‘Listen to my story and you will know me’’: Digital stories as student-centered collaborative projects. TESOL Journal 2(2), 173-202.

Paul McPherron is an assistant professor of English and linguistics at Hunter College in New York City, where he also directs the undergraduate ESL program. At Hunter, he teaches ESL composition courses, Sociolinguistics, and Discourse Analysis. He has recently held academic positions at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, where he was an assistant professor of linguistics, and Stanford University, as an ESL lecturer. His recent research projects include examinations of ESL/EFL teacher and student identities, globalization through English language teaching, and language teaching reforms in China and their effects on the careers of college graduates. He has most recently coedited a book on discourses of health and bodies, entitled Language, Body, and Health: Intersections, Limits, and Experiences, published by Mouton de Gruyter in November 2011, and published a chapter on portfolio assessment in the volume Voices, Identities, Negotiations, and Conflicts: Writing Academic English Across Cultures, published by Emerald Publishing.