Abstract
Digital storytelling has made its way into second language classrooms due to its great potential in promoting linguistic and non-linguistic outcomes increasingly recognized by second language educators. However, the links between digital storytelling and second language learners’ willingness to communicate still remain largely unknown. The present thematic review first presents an introduction to digital storytelling and then elucidates its critical roles in promoting second language willingness to communicate traced to four aspects: creating ample opportunities to practice the second language, negotiating aspired identities, engaging learners with cultural and multimodal resources, and constructing communities of shared interests. Finally, directions for future research are discussed.
Keywords
Introduction
This highly digitalized era has given rise to a phenomenon known as digital multimodal composing (DMC). For instance, it is commonly seen that young people interact with their friends by sharing images and videos along with texts on social platforms. Multimodal texts integrating audio/video materials are increasingly used in second language (L2) classrooms for training students’ language skills (Jiang, 2017). DMC refers to ‘activities that engage learners in the use of digital tools to construct texts in multiple semiotic modes’ (Hafner, 2015: 487). Simply put, learners employ a variety of socially and culturally shaped resources, such as images, sound, and gestures, to make meanings by using digital technologies. Hence, digital storytelling (DST) serves as a versatile multimodal literacy-building tool, skillful use of which can facilitate L2 development (Castañeda, 2013).
As a fine example of DMC practices, DST is ‘the practice of combining multiple modes of technology … to produce a compelling, emotional, and in-depth story’ (Castañeda, 2013: 45). With an emphasis on visual language, DST offers storytellers a space to use their skills and talents to make movie-like videos on a variety of topics. To date, substantial benefits of DST for language development have been unveiled, ranging from promoting L2 proficiency to critical thinking skills (Kim, 2014; Yang and Wu, 2012). Comparatively, little is known about the non-linguistic outcomes that DST can bring about. One important non-linguistic outcome is learners’ willingness to communicate (WTC). L2 WTC is deemed as the ultimate goal of L2 education since learners with higher levels of WTC are inclined to engage in L2 communication when given the opportunities (MacIntyre et al., 1998). Jiang (2017) reported that learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) were more likely to speak up in class when engaged in DMC activities. In their recent study, Shen et al. (2022) found that DST promoted EFL learners’ WTC in writing. However, compared to numerous studies on WTC, the links between DST and WTC remain hardly explored and new to many researchers in this field. In this thematic review, we first present an introduction to DST and a review of the roles of DST in language teaching and learning in general. We then elucidate the potential of DST in promoting WTC in particular.
Knowing DST
DST refers to ‘a distinct nonlinear narrative genre that uses new media technology to produce short, personal narratives using high-quality sound and images’ (Vinogradova et al., 2011: 175). In essence, DST is multimodal, interactive, and translingual. Grounded on a social semiotic perspective (Gee, 2012), DST entails social practices of critically engaging meanings with multimodal and multisemiotic resources (e.g. textual, visual, spatial, and aural) facilitated by digital technologies. Meanwhile, technology-mediated communication allows digital storytellers to instantly reach and interact with a broad range of audiences without temporal and spatial constraints. Against the backdrop of the growing interests in trans-related perspectives, DST is also in line with the tenets of translanguaging (García and Li, 2014) and transmediation (Siegel, 1995). These two perspectives draw critical attention to the semiotic conventions, potentials, and constraints of communication in which bilingual and multilingual speakers tap into their full semiotic repertoire in the meaning-making process. As Fang et al. (2022) noted, the landscape of L2 education has transcended bilingualism or multilingualism to a trans-era. In classrooms, DST is often operationalized as learners’ multimodal ensembles whereby learners’ background knowledge is profoundly activated and meanings are made across different modes with multisemiotic resources.
In recent years, DST has been increasingly incorporated as a versatile tool in language classrooms. Hafner (2014) exemplified a study conducted among students in an English-for-science project at a university in Hong Kong. The students were required to carry out a simple scientific inquiry in teams and report their findings in the form of a digital video scientific documentary. To complete this DST task, they wrote scripts and constructed a storyboard, followed by the next step of filming the background scenery. Audio-recorded narratives were then added to the video on an editing platform. Another study by Castañeda (2013) engaged English native speakers in Spanish learning in U.S. public school contexts. After viewing sample DST products, the Spanish learners were prompted to draft the initial stories on particular moments from their high school experience. They then created a storyboard to set up a framework which afterward served as a guide for working on the multimodal alignment. With all pictures, soundtracks, and recorded narratives in position, the learners synthesized all the multimodal resources together. Both studies involved organizing a workshop in which the learners, prior to the showcase of their completed products, were consistently engaged in discussing, revising, and editing their products based on feedback and technological support from peers and instructors.
Existing literature shows that DST is beneficial to L2 learners’ linguistic and non-linguistic development. As to linguistic growth, DST is useful for developing learners’ vocabulary, grammar awareness, and sentence construction skills (Emert, 2014) and promoting L2 proficiency (Kim, 2014) and multilingual development (Anderson et al., 2018). Non-linguistic benefits include fostering learners’ autonomy (Hafner and Miller, 2011), identity development (Kim and Li, 2021), critical thinking skills (Yang and Wu, 2012), and WTC and group cohesion (Huang, 2022). Although substantial benefits of DST to L2 learning have been widely evidenced, only very limited studies have examined its effects on WTC.
WTC in an L2
L2 WTC was conceptualized as speakers ‘readiness to enter into discourse’ in an L2 with a specific person or persons at a specific time when opportunities are given (MacIntyre et al., 1998: 547). It is a multifaceted construct with not only trait-like features but also situational and dynamic characteristics. (MacIntyre and Legatto, 2011; MacIntyre et al., 1998). MacIntyre et al.’s (1998) heuristic model integrates a host of factors that exert enduring and transient effects on L2 WTC. Individual differences variables (e.g. L2 anxiety, motivation) and situational factors (e.g. familiarity with interlocutors, interests, knowledge of the topic) have been identified to impact WTC (for a recent review, see Peng, 2022).
Over the past decade, studies in digital technology applied to language learning have been vibrant in exploring technological affordances for WTC. Examples of creative use of technology in promoting WTC include game-based learning activities (Reinders and Wattana, 2015), Google Assistant (Tai and Chen, 2020) and LINE smartphone (Wu and Marek, 2016). Taking the perspective of transmediation, Shen et al. (2022)expounded on the generative power of transmediation and found that the participants in a DST workshop exhibited higher levels of WTC in writing when working through a specially designed prescript-video-postscript revision task. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in exploiting technological affordances not only in classrooms but also in extramural digital settings (Lee, 2019), and this expanded interest presents tremendous possibilities for promoting learners’ WTC in technology-mediated communication.
Given the novelty of research on DST and its potential relation to learners’ WTC, this thematic review included pertinent empirical studies published over the last decade. The keywords ‘digital storytelling’ (or ‘digital multimodal composing’), ‘willingness to communicate’ and ‘second language’ (or ‘foreign language’) were employed to search relevant studies in Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar. Upon a close examination of their relevance to the goal of this thematic review, 24 articles were retained and reviewed in depth, which yielded the following aspects in terms of the potentials of DST in promoting L2 learners’ WTC.
Potentials of DST in Promoting L2 WTC
Creating Ample Opportunities to Practice the L2
DST can provide ample opportunities for learners to practice speaking (Huang, 2022; Kim, 2014; Shen et al., 2022). In a DST workshop, learners need to speak the L2 in the process of brainstorming a topic, drafting an initial script, proofreading peers’ work, offering feedback to each other, and rehearsing narration in the final products. These opportunities created by DST can enhance learners’ confidence and ease their anxiety, two antecedents of WTC (MacIntyre et al., 1998). In Huang’s (2022) study of DST projects among a group of EFL learners in Taiwan, the participants’ English proficiency was found to grow significantly as a result of the repeated rehearsals for the best quality of their recordings. This finding suggests that frequent opportunities for authentic use of the L2 in DST workshops help create among learners positive perceptions of the learning experience, leading to stronger WTC.
Negotiating Aspired Identities
L2 learners, when working on DST projects, often engage in negotiating their cultural identities (Kim and Li, 2021). Ushioda (2011) stated that learning and communicating in cyberspace offer substantial opportunities for language learners to try out different identities without worrying about any consequential influence on their identities in reality. In a DST scenario, especially in EFL contexts, learners’ negotiation of identities (e.g. translator or business person) in imagined communities (e.g. international conferences) (Kanno and Norton, 2003) is greatly facilitated by technologies. In this process of identity negotiation, their vision of the aspired identities can yield continuous power that promotes their WTC and L2 use (Zhang et al., 2022). Similarly, in L2 motivation research, Dörnyei (2005) proposed that ideal L2 self and ought-to L2 self, which refer to the L2-related attributes that learners would ideally like to possess or feel they ought to possess in the future, are robust motivators for learning the L2. These concepts of ideal L2 self and ought-to L2 self also reflect learners’ imagined L2-related identities. Peirce (1995) maintained that L2 learners become more invested in learning the L2 when negotiating more powerful identities in relation to the social world. In Kendrick et al.’s (2022) recent study, DST was applauded as an innovative pedagogical approach for a group of young people from refugee backgrounds. The young learners were observed to become deeply invested in learning, taking DST as an opportunity to negotiate their aspired identities as ‘active, autonomous knowledge producers of powerful multimodal texts’ (Kendrick et al., 2022: 980). Therefore, the process of identity formation in DST can generate substantial motivational power that functions to promote WTC (MacIntyre et al., 1998).
Additionally, the opportunities to showcase their final DST products at either an online or offline premiere have also been found to contribute to L2 learners’ identity formation. In Castañeda et al.'s (2018b) study on Latinx learners creating DST during a summer literacy camp, they noticed that learners, given the opportunities to share their accomplished DST in front of invited families and friends, became competent L2 users. Therefore, this motivation of being socially recognized (Jiang and Luk, 2016) constitutes another potential of DST in fostering WTC.
Engaging Learners with Cultural and Multimodal Resources
DST projects propel L2 learners to take advantage of and engage with a wide range of cultural and multimodal resources (Jiang, 2017; Kim and Li, 2021), which can stimulate their WTC by evoking a sense of excitement to share their stories and experience (Kang, 2005). In DST practice, learners are often invited to choose a topic of their interests (e.g. the most memorable experience with friends). The freedom to choose one’s own pivotal moments in life guarantees learners’ familiarity with and interests in the topic, which are situational factors contributing to WTC (Cao and Philp, 2006). Second, learners need to mobilize multimodal resources (e.g. image, audio, text) when composing a digital story. Hafner (2015) noted that learners often remix existing music or video resources available online, a practice commonly observed in DST. In addition, Hafner and Ho (2020), in their discussion on the assessment of DMC artifacts, underscored that classroom teachers should be particularly attentive to L2 learners’ creativity in optimizing different functionally specialized modes and resources to produce their digital stories. Hence, the opportunities to mobilize not only cultural and multimodal resources but also creative ideas to synthesize a multitude of remixing elements into a DST work jointly to excite learners to tell their stories.
Constructing Communities of Shared Interests
Given their interactive nature, DST workshops seem to naturally form communities of shared interests in which the members may gain a sense of security and responsibility to voice their happiness or concerns, which are psychological antecedents of WTC (Kang, 2005). To unveil this potential of DST in relation to L2 learners, Castañeda et al. (2018a) implemented a DST workshop, in which Latinx learners mostly shared their stories about social justice issues in the U.S., such as feelings of being laughed at due to accents and struggles of migrant families in coping with cultural differences. They reported that empathy and solidarity in the process of reading and commenting on each other’s digital stories were effectively cultivated among group members. A similar finding was reported in Copeland and De Moor’s (2018) study on a community DST project through which a circle of trust was built to confront social justice issues. Hence, increased familiarity along with the sense of empathy gained from the supportive and low-risk DST environment can stimulate learners’ WTC.
Directions for Future Studies on DST and L2 WTC
The literature reviewed above shows that DST as a literacy-building tool presents great potential in not only facilitating L2 learning but also arousing learners’ motivation and willingness to communicate, using the L2, with real-world or virtual audiences in a digital manner. However, much more research is needed to accrue empirical evidence which can then inform pedagogical practice. Future studies may consider several directions. First, robust methods such as experimental research are needed to test the influence of DST on WTC. This also entails direct measures of WTC since it is a latent construct (see Shen et al., 2022). Second, since DST usually involves sequential steps lasting for a long period of time, researchers may examine the dynamic changes of learners’ WTC over the period, so that episodes or events related to learners’ ebbs and flows of WTC can be identified and interventions can be implemented accordingly. More importantly, research design may examine the influence of DST on learners’ WTC and L2 proficiency, which can provide strong evidence for the important role of DST and WTC in promoting learners’ L2 development.
Footnotes
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This study was funded by Humanities and Social Science Research Project of Hebei Education Department (grant number BJ2020090) and Research Project of Teaching in Higher Education of Shijiazhuang Tiedao University (grant number Y2019-2-4) to the first author, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 31960180) to the second author.
