Student English Teachers' Vantage Points of the Digital Short Stories They Designed for Young Learners

Introduction

Using stories as a component of instructional practices is conceived to serve as a medium for teaching, motivating and inspiring students (Bowman, 2018; Rajabi et al., 2018), engaging them in the learning process (Rutta et al., 2021; Moradi & Chen, 2019), and developing their critical thinking skills (Grigsby et al., 2015). As a result of developments in digital technologies over the last two decades, having shaped the way education is provided at diverse levels, digital storytelling has cultivated genuine appreciation of educators from discrete disciplines. For instance, digital storytelling has been used to promote second/foreign language teaching (e.g., Tour et al., 2021). In view of the affordances of digital storytelling such as awakening students’ curiosity about what is covered in the lesson, it is unsurprising that it has been employed in the teaching of a second/foreign language as well.

The beneficial effect of using digital stories on teaching and learning the target language requires initial English language teacher programs to reframe their current coursework so that it can corroborate pre-service English teachers in acquiring and harnessing knowledge and skills they will need as designing and using digital storytelling in the teaching of English. That could enable pre-service English teachers to practice designing, shooting and using digital stories to teach English to students of different ages. A literature review done in an effort to find research into exploring pre-service English teachers’ reflections upon their experiences of creating digital short stories (DSSs) for young learners of English has shown this topic has not been scrutinized up to date. In light of this gap, the present research targeted broadening the literature on both digital storytelling and pre-service teachers’ reflections on their experiences of creating DSSs through presenting findings as to pre-service English teachers’ perceptions of the use of DSSs in young English language learner classes and their experiences of developing DSSs for them.