EDULEARN11International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies

Exploring the impact of using stories and ICT to teach English to three and four-year-old Spanish children:

Motivation and Development

Very young children

around the world

are learning English at ever younger ages

Teachers are faced with the challenge of finding or creating the best method to teach English to this young population

Should teachers use traditional teaching methods? Should they use the Internet? Should they allow the children to exchange email with pen-pals from around the globe?Should students be allowed chats or calls via webcams and IM services?In the end, preschool language teachers have more questions than answers regarding the best method to present a new language to children who are still developing a first one

Should they try using technology-supported approaches to language teaching?

The study presented here was created as an effort to respond

some of the questions from preschool language teachers

In the study we asked two preschool

to create 12 language lessons for 3- and

4-year-old based on an enhanced

storytelling approach which made

use of to deliver three CD-ROM

stories: , , and .

In short, we used + to explore:

teachers’ views on the use of ICT to teach English to preschool children

if and how children developed literacy skills from the use of an ICT-based storytelling approach and

how children liked the use of ICT in the language lesson

Results of the study showed that

=

Teachers supported the idea of integrating ICT into the language curriculum. Their opinions were that technology offers children multiple opportunities to facilitate language learning, including: access to meaningful materials or development of native-like pronunciation of English

+

However

resources: time, equipmentprovision of teachers’ training andaccess to technical support, preferably on-site

Teachers also agreed that ICT integration in the preschool curricula must consider

With regards to the participant children

+ =

The children expressed a positive opinion on the use of stories and technology in the English lessons

and importantly

There was indication of development of literacy skills, albeit with markedly different patterns for each of the participant children

Enrique’s retelling scores throughout the duration of the study

Isolda

Development patterns after retellings’ analysis under the Narrative Scoring Scheme (NSS) differed for each of the participant children

Ana Pablo

Influencing factors for quality of retellings included appeal to the story, children’s personalities and overall attitude towards the English lesson

Enrique Isolda Ana

An opinion survey: the children were asked to paste pictures representing lesson’s components in a scale-like form. The results: a general positive opinion of the activities in the language lessons

However (yet interestingly)

Pablo

One child voiced a very different opinion regarding most of the lesson activities, except when he was asked about having worked on the computer

Results of the study are encouraging and present new

research opportunities, especially with mobile technologies and

touch screen devices

Like the effects that a story like the one shown in the following demo would have on children’s

development

*Demo prepared in collaboration with Cleopatra Garza and Nicia Guillen from ITESM Campus Monterrey

For more detailed information on the study described in this presentation, please refer to the full paper found in the conference publications. To discuss any of the issues

from this study, please contact me by email at ars@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Thank you!

*The style used to create this presentation was influenced by that of Lawrence Lessig. Many thanks!