Digital Stories: Teaching Kids Foreign Languages

While I was searching for an article on the net about digital stories, I came across an interesting paper titled “Using digital stories to improve listening comprehension with Spanish young learners of English”. This article examined a study of the effect that digital stories had on the understanding of English by a group of 6 year old Spanish children from six states in Madrid. As I read on I was very much intrigued of how these online stories helped these young Spanish children to grasp a better understanding of the English language. Such advantages of digital stories mentioned within the article include their ability to “facilitate learning since children are actively involved in decoding and understanding the story” as well as allowing student to work at their own pace so that they could “afford a high level of individual control”.

This article interested me particularly, as not only am I studying Primary School Education at university, but also International Studies where I am learning German which I hope to later be able to teach in primary school. Hence, to be aware of the benefits of technological tools, such as digital stories in teaching a foreign language, I can thus incorporate these Internet-based stories into my teaching methods so as to hopefully further develop the listening comprehension and literacy of my students in a playful and enjoyable context.

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