Exploring Digital Storytelling on Cultural Issues at the English Lessons in Multilingual Classrooms

Abstract

For centuries, rendering stories has been the most powerful medium for transmitting cultural heritage to future generations, because stories were initially used for the purpose of education. In the past two decades, the dynamic emergence of technological innovations has given a fresh start to new forms of culture and language teaching that are completely different from print-based sources. Also, computers and digital technologies have become a breeding ground for a massive variety of new methodological approaches and pedagogical techniques. Multicultural education is considered to be a good opportunity for our country to integrate the young generation into the world economy and global society, but we still encounter some difficulties. This research aims to analyze the implementation of digital storytelling in multicultural education during English language classes on the topic entitled “ ” for 1st-year students, which took place over 7 weeks. The present questionnaire-based study examines the outcomes of digital storytelling procedures at the Eurasian National University. The study was conducted through a theoretical study of the phenomenon, observation, monitoring, focus-group interviews, and testing. Moreover, the present study was an attempt to investigate the effect of creating and perceiving storytelling on students’ cultural awareness. Data elaboration and statistical analysis were performed. The results of the study showed that the implementation of traditional storytelling with well-designed, attractive, and demanding high-level cognitive activities integrated with new technology had fulfilled its true instructional potential, making students’ minds more creative and providing the perfect environment for language and culture teaching.