Exploring Digital Storytelling as a Strategy to Enhance English Language Skills: A Teachers’ Perspective

Abstract

The present study explores English language teachers' perceptions of digital storytelling (DST) as a pedagogical approach to enhance English language skills of secondary school students in Vehari, Pakistan. The research is based on socio-constructivist and multiliteracies theory, which addresses the current issues of traditional EFL classroom such as low speaking confidence, limited productive skills, and lack of technology integration in the classroom where resources are limited. Structured questionnaires were used to collect data from 40 teachers and semi-structured interviews conducted with 12 participants from three private secondary schools. The quantitative results showed high levels of agreement on the effectiveness of DST for speaking fluency, pronunciation and communicative competence (M=3.78, 3.88, 4.00 respectively), and moderate improvements in writing and listening. The teachers reported improvement in student engagement, motivation and collaboration as well. Themes of qualitative nature included pedagogical gains, inclusive learning spaces and important constraints including technological infrastructure, time and digital literacy. The study highlights the possibility of a multimodal, student-centered DST model and the importance of institutional supports and professional development. The findings have significant practical implications for the teaching and learning of EFL in developing contexts and to the technology enhanced language learning literature.