The Value of a Digital Story in a Content and Language Integrated learning (CLIL) European Context

Authors

  • Maria Dolores Ramirez Verdugo Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
  • María Victoria Sotomayor Sáez Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1344/der.2012.22.52-67

Keywords:

Digital story, Bilingualism, CLIL, Fictional narrative, Multicultural learning, European languages.

Abstract

This article presents the research conducted within the framework of the funded project called European CLIL Resource Centre for Web 2.0 Education (E-CLIL, 504671-LLP-1-2009-1-ES-COMENIUS-CMP). The mission of E-CLIL is to increase children's exposure to European languages and to improve the quality of teaching through the implementation of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) within the European demand for acquiring a mother tongue plus two foreign languages. The project is currently building multilingual interactive resources for the use of CLIL teachers. More specifically, the present study investigates the value a digital story may bring to a Primary education context which promotes CLIL and ICT as methodological procedure and resources.

The central digital story, originally created for this project, entails three main objectives which involves exposing young learners to European languages, children literature and science content. Our main aim was to prove whether the universal narrative elements and structure present in this digital story may enhance 8 to 10 year-old students' learning involvement and CLIL achievement. In an initial piloting phase of the study, the story was presented to a total of 12 experienced English CLIL teachers working in three different state bilingual schools in the region of Madrid. In order to gather objective data that may prove our hypotheses these teachers completed initial and final questionnaires which were then analysed. The outcome gathered has been used to extend the piloting to other European countries participating in the project. This larger study will provide information on cross-cultural similarities or differences regarding the results already obtained here. These initial findings point towards the richness a central digital storyline may add to a CLIL learning context at linguistic, content, literary, cognitive, social and cultural levels.

Published

2012-08-23