Applying a multimedia storytelling website in foreign language

Computers & Education 47 (2006) 17–28

www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu

Applying a multimedia storytelling website in foreignlanguage learning

Wenli Tsou a,*, Weichung Wang b, Yenjun Tzeng c

a Department of Languages and Literature Education, National University of Tainan, 33, Section 2, Su-Lin

Street, 700 Tainan, Taiwan, ROCb Department of Applied Mathematics, National University of Kaohsiung, 811 Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC

c Shinbau Elementary School, 528 Changhua, Taiwan, ROC

Received 25 November 2003; accepted 18 August 2004

Abstract

Storytelling is a practical and powerful teaching tool, especially for language learning. Teachers in lan-

guage classrooms, however, may hesitate to incorporate storytelling into language instruction because of analready overloaded curriculum. English foreign language (EFL) teachers in Taiwan report additional prob-

lems 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�sstory recall processes in EFL classrooms, it was implemented in one elementary school to test its effective-

ness 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

0360-1315/$ - see front matter � 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2004.08.013

* Corresponding author.

E-mail address: [email protected] (W. Tsou).

mailto:[email protected]

18 W. Tsou et al. / Computers & Education 47 (2006) 17–28

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.

� 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Elementary education; Improving classroom teaching; Interactive learning environments; Teaching/learning

strategies

1. Background

Language development has become important to the education for all age levels. According toLerstrom (1990, p. 3) ‘‘Professional and personal success is related to a person�s ability to speak,listen, read, and write effectively’’. In order to provide successful language learning, Pesola (1991,p. 340) suggested that storytelling is ‘‘one of the most powerful tools for surrounding the younglearner with language’’. Including storytelling in the curriculum can improve the level of learningin these four language skills (Wilson, 1997). In addition, storytelling is a creative art form that hasentertained and informed across centuries and cultures, and its instructional potential continuesto serve teachers. Much of the language children learn reflects the language and behavior ofthe adult models they interact with and listen to (Strickland & Morrow, 1989). ‘‘Listening to sto-ries draws attention to the sounds of language and helps children develop a sensitivity to the waylanguage works’’ (Isbell, 2002, p. 27). According to Isbell (2002), many stories that work well withchildren include repetitive phrases, unique words, and enticing description. These characteristicsencourage students to join in actively to repeat, chant, sing, or even retell the story. This kind ofvoluntary oral classroom participation is believed to correlate positively with students� academicachievement (Ellis, 1988). The more oral participation in class, the better speaking improvement s/he obtains. This oral practice in language classrooms is important to language learners� oral lan-guage development, especially for EFL learners since most students� language practice happenedonly in the language classroom (Tsou, 2005).

It seems that storytelling is a practical and powerful teaching tool, especially for language learn-ing. However, teachers report difficulties in integrating storytelling into their classrooms. Accord-ing to an informal survey the researchers conducted in a conference for 180 elementary EFLteachers, currently less than one fourth of the elementary EFL teachers in Taiwan apply storytell-ing in their English classes. The reasons for not using storytelling include time and space in thecurriculum. Moreover, language teachers in Taiwan have additional problems such as lackingthe skills for integrating stories into EFL materials, finding appropriate activities before, duringand after storytelling, as well as lacking experience or training in storytelling techniques. Sincemost English children�s books for storytelling in Taiwan are imported from other English speak-ing countries, teachers encounter additional problems in helping students understand contenxtu-alized differences in identity, culture and language usage.

In addition to considering the value of storytelling as a means of mediating languageinstruction, the researchers� thinking was also guided by scholarship documenting the impactof computer-assisted instruction on student learning. Computer assisted learning is becomingincreasingly popular because well-designed programs are believed to facilitate both teachingand learning processes (Christmann, Badgett, & lucking, 1997; Kulik & Kulik, 1991). Therefore,

W. Tsou et al. / Computers & Education 47 (2006) 17–28 19

the researchers of this study intended to employ the advantages of computer instruction to ad-dress some of the instructional hindrances EFL teachers have encountered in trying to introducestorytelling in Taiwan. Specifically, the researchers chose to apply computer multimedia aidedlearning on EFL storytelling. Because of the increasing availability and use of computers in class-rooms and the Taiwan Ministry of Education�s enthusiastic promotion of computer use in Englishinstruction, the researchers decided to use the elementary EFL learning population in Taiwan asthe target environment.

Computer multimedia aided learning is reported to be beneficial in many disciplines, includingforeign language learning (Miller, 1998; Trollip & Alessi, 1988; Tsou, Wang, & Li, 2002). Multi-media construction tools resulting in multimedia compositions, presentations, portfolios, andgames have also been used successfully as learning techniques for many years (Jonassen & Reeves,1996; Lehrer, Erickson, & Connell, 1991; Turner & Dipinto, 1997). Furthermore, with recent well-developed environments over the Internet, Web-based education is becoming popular and effec-tive. For instance, a Website can effectively integrate roles as a computer independent platform,a delivery medium, a communication medium, a methodology for learning, and an integratingmedium (Alessi & Trollip, 2001). In addition, educational theories support Web-based instructionand provide many instructional designing guidelines (Leflore, 2000).

As methodologies of interactive multimedia for facilitating learning can be divided into eightcategories: Simulations, Tools and Open-ended Learning Environments, Hypermedia, Games,Web-based learning, Tutorials, Drills, and Tests (Alessi & Trollip, 2001), the development ofthe Storytelling Website in the study focuses on the first five categories. While composing the sto-ries on the website, users can easily apply the graphics, animations, sound effects, and music pro-vide by the Website to nicely simulate specific occasions, atmospheres, and locations to fit theirstories and imaginations. As users are freely to manipulate the simulations tools, the Websiteactually provide an open-ended and constructivist learning environment and experience. Further-more, since all the materials are organized in the hypermedia format, the Website allows learnersto choose their own paths adaptively on learning and utilize English storytelling in a constructivistapproach. The Storytelling Website is also an interesting and lively English learning environment.Learns not only can compose the stories without limitation on the subjects; they also can followthe model stories created by the teacher to practice to mastery as playing games. The model storiescan also act as curriculum teaching materials to be presented in classroom instruction. Finally,since all the learning tools and completed stories are stored and delivered via website, learnersand teachers can easily access the entire learning environment without worrying about softwareinstallation and data updating.

Almost as important as storytelling itself are the follow-up activities after storytelling, such asstory recall. Story recall allows children to revisit the tale and refine their understanding. It helpschildren develop concepts about words, print, and books as well as assessing students� current lan-guage levels (Morrow, 2001). Therefore, recalling story events has proven to be a viable means ofestimating understanding. Specifically, story recall provides children with the opportunity to reor-ganize the sequence of events, to use the vocabulary of the story and to expand children�s compre-hension of the world as well (McGee & Richgels, 2000). This kind of practice is necessary for childrento develop language proficiency. Researchers consistently report a relationship between activeresponding during practice and improved proficiency with the skills practiced (Ericsson, Krampe,& Tesch-Romer, 1993). Furthermore, story recall is both a research tool for it provides a large


amount of data for researchers to gain insight into a reader�s comprehension processes (Goodman,1982) as well as an instructional strategy that can also enhance the development of various literacyskills. In general, studies of story recall used common quantitative language measures such as meanT-unit length, mean number of dependent clauses per T-unit, and total number of words percomposition as well as aspects of story (i.e., characters, plots, initiating events, sequence, etc.)

2. Purpose of the study

The researchers in this study have developed a multimedia Storytelling Website to study howweb-based technology can assist EFL teaching and learning process through storytelling and storyrecalls. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of this Website in significantly facilitating chil-dren�s EFL teaching and learning process, it was implemented in one elementary school to testits effectiveness in instruction and in resultant student learning. The storytelling Website was usedfor both the EFL instructor to compose stories for telling in the experimental group and for EFLlearners in the experimental group to compose story recalls. However, in the control group, theteacher applied only regular storytelling process without any assistance from the Storytelling Web-site and the students in the control group hand wrote their story recalls after each storytelling.

3. Methodology

3.1. Overview

This Website serves as a storytelling environment for teaching and learning EFL by allowingusers to: (1) compose online multimedia stories in an easy, intuitive, and quick manner, evenfor young students, (2) re-play and share the stories composed by others in schools or at home,(3) demonstrate or learn how storytelling can be integrated into classes, and (4) access the Websiteanytime and anywhere. Furthermore, the system stores complete records of all the students� workand activities over the system, allowing teachers to monitor students� works, evaluate students�language progress, and provide online feedback. It is worth mentioning that all the functionalitiesprovided by the system can be easily accessed via a Web browser (e.g., Microsoft Internet Ex-plorer), which is widely available and virtually free for use on most personal computers. Conse-quently there is no software installation needed, which is an essential factor for encouragingstudents and teachers to use the Website. At the same time, all users will be able to use the latestversion of the functionalities, for all the services are provided by the server to which users willconnect. The researchers believe such system design is essential since schools will not have to pur-chase and will avoid difficulties encountered in installing software.

The Website contains following main feature modules.

3.2. Multimedia story composing module (Fig. 1)

In this main module of the system, users can compose a new story or modify an existing storyvia a Web browser. All of the actions can be undertaken by easily mastered mouse clicks andkeystrokes.


To compose a new page in a story, a blank canvas is first shown as Fig. 1(a). Users may startcomposing the story by choosing the background from the first pull-down menu located in theright hand side of the webpage. The chosen background will be shown immediately as Fig.1(b). Users can then choose several subjects from other pull-down menus as demonstrated inFig. 1(c). The chosen object, for example, the girl in Fig. 1(d), will be shown on the canvas. Manyobjects, including characters, animals, naturals, articles, and others, are included in the choice me-nus. Users can click the words on the left of the menus (‘‘figure list’’ in Chinese) to show the figureindex. Fig. 1(e) demonstrates some of the available objects. It is worth mentioning that the back-grounds and objects contain both still images and animations. The animations can bring lots offun to the story composing or storytelling process.

Users can further choose sound effects and music to make the stories even more vivid and lively.The background music (e.g., classical music, songs, etc.), and special sound effects (e.g., phoneringing, thunder, etc.), can be chosen from the pull-down menus as shown in Fig. 1(f). Further-more, users can even record their own voice and include the voice into the page. Fig. 1(f) alsoshows the screen shot of the voice recorder. Finally, users can type text on the text area locatedin the lower left part of the composing webpage. The text will be incorporated with other chosenobjects to form a multimedia (texts, cartoons, images, animations, music, sound effects, and voice)story webpage.

While modifying an existing story, the page containing all the chosen objects will be shown firstand users can then modify the page by the similar process for composing a new story.

3.3. Story re-playing module (Fig. 2)

After the online multimedia story has been composed and/or revised, the completed story canbe re-played. The website further provides some well-composed stories done by the teacher orstudents, hence all users can re-play these model stories to learn more about the stories or lan-guage as well as the ways to compose nice stories. Users can now present his or her story accom-panied by the Web-based demonstration of that story page by page. Furthermore, they can evenhave the freedom to move to any page if necessary. Fig. 2 also highlights this functionality. Theselected objects and text will be displayed, accompanied by simultaneous animation, music,sound effects, and recorded voice. Furthermore, another appealing feature of this system is thatusers can drag selected objects on each page to move them around. This interactive function canincrease both agency and enjoyment; users can create multiple stories from one online multime-dia storybook.

3.4. Accounts administration module (Fig. 3)

Students, teachers, and system administrators login to the (password protected) system withdifferent levels of authorities and functions for using the system. For example, each student canlogin to his/her own account to compose his/her own stories. They can also continue their unfin-ished works. Teachers, on the other hand, not only can edit stories to be used in their classes, butthey can also have the authority to view and evaluate what students have done. Furthermore,teachers can select model stories created by students for displays. Students can easily browse thesemodel stories as references and inspiration for their own story composing. System administrators

Fig. 1. Multimedia story composing website page. Users can compose a multimedia story by selecting characters,

objects, sound effects, animations and music as well as by recording their own voice and typing in texts. All the work is

done via a web browser. Part (a) highlights the initial blank canvas (by the red square). Part (b) shows that users can

choose a background of the page from the right hand side pull-down menu and the chosen background will be shown

on the canvas. Part (c) demonstrates how a pull-down menu works. A girl is added in Part (d) as this character is

chosen. Users can choose many other characters, objects, from the pull-down menus similarly. Part (e) shows some

examples of available objects can be chosen from. Music and sound effects can be chosen from the lower right menu as

indicated in Part (f). The figure also shows the recorder that is capable to recording users� voice. The lower left text area

allows users to type in the texts. All together, users can compose an interesting and exciting multimedia story web page

very easily. Since the Storytelling Website is designed for Taiwanese students, Chinese characters are used in the web

pages. These characters can be easily customized to other languages if necessary.


Fig. 2. Story re-playing website page. Users can read the story via a web browser. The background music and sound

effects can be played alone with the story. The animations, e.g., clouds and birds, will be played automatically.

Furthermore, objects (e.g., the girl and the dinosaur) can be dragged and moved around. If necessary, users can move

freely to any page by selecting the number of pages located in the bottom of the web page.

Fig. 3. Accounts administration website page. Each user has a password-protected account. After login to the system, a

user can create, modify, read and delete stories.


can add and remove user accounts and assign authority levels. The management tasks can be donevia a user-friendly Website interface; no profound computer knowledge is needed (see Fig. 3).

3.5. Implementation of the storytelling website in the language classroom

To demonstrate the effectiveness of the storytelling Website in facilitating storytelling in bothEFL teaching and young children�s foreign language learning, the Website was implemented inone elementary school in southern Taiwan for ten weeks to test its effectiveness on instruction


and resultant student learning. More than 50% of the students in the elementary school came frommiddle class families. Before the treatment, all 5th graders in the school were tested for their gen-eral language proficiency under the commercial proficiency test, STYLE Level 5 1, story compre-hension (measured by story structures) and language complexity (measured by T-units). Two 5thgrade classes (35 students each) were then chosen to participate in the study because of the com-parable student language proficiency and common English instructor. Before the onset of theexperiment, the English instructor received three-hours of training in applying the storytellingWebsite to EFL storytelling and 18 hours of instruction within an EFL storytelling workshop.The instruction in the workshop included techniques, activities, classroom management andteaching aids in English storytelling. In addition to lectures, each member in the workshop hadto actually conduct his or her storytelling in a regular classroom with young children. Every sto-rytelling was videotaped and commented by both the workshop instructor and members in theworkshop before the next storytelling.

On the other hand, the students in the experimental group received classroom English instruc-tion involving storytelling and story recall assisted by the Storytelling Website; students in thecontrol group received the same procedures but without the additional support from the Story-telling Website. After each story, all participating students were assessed for their story compre-hension and the sentence complexity demonstrated in their story recalls. After reviewing severalresearchers� studies, Morrow (1985) concluded that

1 S

tests f

have m

cultur

[w]ell-formed stories have structures that include a setting (time, place, and characters), atheme (a beginning event that causes the mail character to react and form a goal or face aproblem), plot episodes (events in which the main character attempts to attain the goal orsolve the problem), and a resolution (the attainment of the goal or solution of the problemand the ending, which may have long-term consequences) (p. 648).

Based on the review, the researchers of the study decided to evaluate students� story compre-hension through story structures according to the following six elements: Beginning statement,characters, theme, plot, resolution, and sequence. Table 1 presents an example of the scoringsheet for the story comprehension including the aforementioned six elements. When studentsincluded one beginning statement, character, theme, plot, resolution or correct sequence in eachof the six categories, they received one point on the scoring sheet. On the other hand, sentencecomplexity was assessed by T-unit (minimal terminable unit): ‘‘A measure of linguistic complex-ity of sentences’’. According to Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics,T-nits is the shortest unit which a sentence can be reduced to, and consisting of one independentclause together with whatever dependent clauses are attached to it (Richards, Platt, & Platt,1992).

Five stories appropriate for the students� cognitive and language levels were chosen with thehelp of the English instructor as materials for teaching (three stories) as well as story structureand sentence complexity tests (two stories). The three stories used for teaching materials were:

TYLE (Saxoncourt Tests for Young Learners of English) is a series of listening and reading-based comprehension

or children between the ages of 6 and 13. There are six levels in this series. It was designed for young learners who

inimum English learning experience for at least nine months. Only language ability is tested in STYLE and not

e knowledge. STYLE is published by Norman House, London, UK, 1994.

Table 1

Example of the scoring sheet for story comprehension

Title of the story: drip, drop, drip Student name: Honjen

Story elements Scores

Setting Beginning statement Once upon a time 1

Drip, drop, drip 1

Characters Rain 1

Dog 1

Frog 1

Mouse 1

House 1

Tree 1

Me 0

Someone else 0

Theme It�s raining 1

Plot The rain is dripping on something. 1

The rain is dripping on the little girl. 1

Resolution Rain, rain, go away 1

Drip on someone else. 0

Sequence 1. dog 2. frog 3. mouse 4. house 5. tree 6. me 7. rain goes away

8. drip on someone else

(! 3! 4! 5! 6! 7) 5

Total scores = 17


The knight and the dragon (fiction), Bertie was a watchdog (adventure) and Prince Cinders (re-vised fairy tale). In The knight and the dragon, a knight who has never fought a dragon andan equally inexperience dragon prepare to meet each other in battle. Bertie was a watchdog

talks about how a tiny watchdog fought with a big and horrible robber. Prince Cinders isa male version of the fairy tale – Cinderella. The two stories used for story structure and sen-tence complexity tests were Mouse paint (animal story) and If you give a mouse a cookie (ani-mal story). In Mouse paint, three white mice were playing with three jars of paint – red,yellow as well as blue and created many different colors. If you give a mouse a cookie presentsthe story about a clustering of requests from a little mouse that asks only for a cookie at thebeginning.

Students in both groups had the same storytelling materials in class. In the control group, whilepresenting the stories, the instructor applied regular storytelling procedures and used big booksand flash cards (words or pictures) as visual aids in presentations. However, in the experimentalgroup, instead of using regular storybooks, stories were recreated with the Storytelling Website toaccompany the teacher�s storytelling. When all the stories were presented, students from bothclasses were tested for their story comprehension (with the two test stories), story sentence com-plexity (with the two test stories) and general language proficiency (with STYLE Level 5). Finally,a questionnaire regarding learning was also distributed to students for additional feedback. Abrief interview with the instructor was conducted by the researchers as well at the end to docu-ment further comments and suggestions.


4. Results and discussion

Before the treatment, students in both classes were pre-tested in language proficiency, storycomprehension and sentence complexity. There were no significant differences in the above threeaccounts between groups (Table 2). However, after the ten-week experiment, the results of stu-dents� tests indicated some significant differences between groups. As shown in Table 3, studentslearning with the web, on average, did better in their sentence complexity (p < .05) and post lan-guage proficiency test (p < .05). As for the story comprehension, the difference between groupswas not statistically significant (p > .05). These results indicated three important findings. First,since storytelling was appealing to students, with or without the assistance from the storytellingmultimedia web, students could easily comprehend the story and recall the story structure. Sec-ond, with the multimedia computer-assisted process, students retained more words, phrasesand sentences. Thus, when recall stories, they tended to copy or recreate more language from whatthey listened and read, and this resulted in greater sentence complexity and language proficiency.Third, through the multimedia storytelling website, students received extra visual and audio stim-uli through still pictures, animation, music, and/or sound effects. These stimuli not only providedeasier access for story recalls but also facilitated students� creativity in recreating stories. Studentsin the Storytelling Website group tended to include more details in recalls. Furthermore, manydetails that the students included in their recalls were related to materials coming from theirown creations, such as physical descriptions of the characters, their locations, and sound effects.These descriptions were not as apparent in the recalls of students in the control group.

The results of the student questionnaire again indicate differences between groups. Students ofboth groups expressed interest in having storytelling as a regular part of the class (t = .453,p > .05). However, when asked about their improvement on English learning, students in theexperimental group tended to be more confident than students in the control group (t = 2.098,p < .05), and this result was also confirmed by the post language proficiency test as indicatedabove. In addition, students in the experimental group expressed enjoyment of the story recalling

Table 2

Pre-test results between groups

Groups Story comprehension

mean (SD)

Sentence complexity

mean (SD)

Language proficiency

mean (SD)

Experiment (N = 35) 19.45 (11.89) 71.43 (11.89) 61.83 (23.46)

Control (N = 35) 22.28 (8.49) 64.54 (20.36) 65.95 (25.03)

t-test 1.43 .166 .474

Table 3

Student increase (post-test scores – pre-test scores) between groups

Groups Story comprehension mean Sentence complexity mean Language proficiency mean

Experiment (N = 35) 3.72 (2.12) 4.91 (8.43) 11.09 (14.81)

Control (N = 35) 3.85(3.55) 1.56 (8.26) 5.12 (13.83)

t-test .16 2.382* 2.475*

* p < .05.


process more than students in the control group (t = 3.394, p < .01). They believed the process wasbeneficial and they also valued the opportunity of being able to practice or create stories on theirown, irrespective of time and place.

The interview with the instructor also revealed support for the Storytelling Website. Theinstructor indicated greater anxiety when presenting stories in the control group and she felt lessconfident. She believed that the students in the experimental group seemed to be more engaged inthe storytelling process because of the colorful, animated multimedia format of the presentation.She concluded that storytelling was effective on language teaching, but without the Website shewould not embrace the storytelling process herself: ‘‘I am not good at drawing and I really donot have much time to gather visual aids and sound effects on my own . . . Without the Web, ittook much more efforts to get my students to write stories (in story recalls). The Website is reallymagical to me and my class’’.

4.1. Education value of the storytelling web

Since the Storytelling Website can provide background pictures, objects, characters, sound ef-fects and even music to be integrated into storytelling, teachers can prepare the storytelling proc-ess more efficiently. Besides, with the multimedia Storytelling Website, teachers can easilyintegrate the culture knowledge of the English language through storytelling. In other words, withthe unique features of the Internet, teachers can easily gather authentic materials of Englishspeaking cultures, such as songs, pictures and activities about festivals from related websites intheir storytelling. After teacher�s storytelling, students can browse or experience events of that cul-ture through video clips, culture production or personal remarks provided by many related web-sites. Furthermore, the Website can provide creative classroom activities for use after storytelling.For instance, the teacher or students can select a set of pictures for students to consider in creatingtheir stories. The teacher can also modify the original story by changing the characters or settingsand letting students rewrite their own stories. As indicated in the introductory section, children�sstory comprehension is facilitated when they are involved actively in the reconstruction of a story.Recalling stories requires a child to engage actively in the process of interpreting and integratingknowledge into his/her schema. The Website also allows teacher�s stories be played again andagain for reviewing purposes, and individual student�s story recalls to be stored into a personaldigital portfolio which teachers can access student�s learning progress or to conduct peercomparisons.

The aforementioned functions of the Website demonstrate its significant value and importancein education, especially in foreign language teaching and learning. Because of its convenience, thisinstructional tool holds great potential for solving problems teachers typically encounter whenattempting to introduce storytelling in the foreign language classroom.

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Applying a multimedia storytelling website in foreign language