DIGITAL STORY IN ORAL ENGLISH TEACHINGLaily Amin Fajariyah

SMPN 5 Panggang, Gunungkidul, Yogyakarta(e-mail: lailyaminf@yahoo.co.id)

ABSTRACTDigital storytelling is the process of combining the art of telling stories with a variety of digital multimedia, such as images, audio, and video (Robin, B, 2006). It consists of some steps starting from the collection of picture to the publication. The pictures or photos are the visual being inserted in the process. The voice or soundtrack will be recorded before or along the process as the audio input. The other input can be in the form of video. Those visual, audio and/or video inputs will be blended in the digital storytelling by running the special software. The process of editting allow users to innovate the visual and audio inputs before it is published.

There are seven elements in digital storytelling, those are point of view, dramatic questions, emotional content, the gift of your voice, the power of soundtrack, economy and pacing (Center for Digital Storytelling, 2005). Those elements are supposed to be taken into account in doing Digital Storytelling.

The result of the process is a digital story that can be used in the oral English teaching. The digital story can accomodate the six component of tasks (Nunan, 2004: 40-73). It also provides some benefits for the oral English teaching. In line with the current “genre based’ curriculum, a digital story can be aimed at teaching monologue with the type of text narrative and recount. It will also provide the students with enough visual and audio input for doing the task. The setting of the story can be close to the students real world to arise students attraction to the digital story which results in the active participation of the students in the classroom.

Keyword: Digital Storytelling, soft ware, digital story, task

INTRODUCTIONIn this globalization era, technology is becoming increasingly important for human

lives. Almost the aspects of lives, both personal and professional lives, make use of technology (Dudeney and Hockly, 2007: 5). There are two major beliefs related to technologies growth that supports the use of tecnologies in education. Those are: (1) Technology is everywhere and therefore, should be in education and (2) research has show how and where computer-based methods are effective. Moreover, technology-based method which are already implemented, are likely to have advantages for the instructional process (Roblyer, M.D. 2003: 10-12). The advantages are as follows:

1. Gaining learners attentionThe visual and interactive features of many technology resources are believed to be able to focus students’ attention and encourage them to spend more time on learning tasks (Pask-McCartney, 1989; Summers, 1990-1991). For example, multimedia can be used to capture and hold students’ attention.

2. Engaging the learners through production workThe teacher can create their own technology-based products to make learning more meaningful to students. For example, giving students opportunity to students to be creative in making some products using technologies.

3. Increasing perceptions of control

When students can control their own learning, they will be more motivated. Some researches report that computer-based materials are one of the power in improving the motivation.

ORAL ENGLISH TEACHINGThe Oral language is defined as short, fragmentally utterances by Brown and Yule

(1983) in Nunan (1989: 26). Unlike written language, it is usually unplanned and often reflects the process of construction, such as hesitations, reduced forms, fillers, and repeats (Richard, 2008: 3). In the Oral English instructions, the teacher should be able to provide the natural language that is different from the written one. The oral English instruction covers two major skills, those are teaching listening and speaking.

Listening can be perceived in two ways: listening as comprehension and listening as acquisition. Listening as comprehension assumes that listening in second language learning is to facilitate the understanding of the oral discourse. Two different processes can be used in understanding spoken discourse: bottom-up processing and top-down processing. The typical lesson in the developed instruction combined the two processing types in three phases of listening: pre-listening, whiles-listening, and post listening. The pre-listening involves students in activating the prior knowledge, making prediction, and reviewing the key vocabulary. The while-listening focuses on comprehension to require selective listening, sequencing, etc. The post-listening requires students to give opinion about the topic (Richards, 2008: 3-10).

To provide a good listening activity, an effective listening course should be conducted. David Nunan (Richard & Renandya, 2002:241) summarizes some characteristics of effective listening activities, those are:

The materials should use the authentic texts for both of the dialogues and monologues.

Listening should be preceded by a schema-building/ background knowledge The materials should incorporate the strategies for effective listening The learners should be given chance to listen to the texts for several times and work

through increasingly challenging tasks. Learners should know the aims and resons of their listening The tasks should activate learners’ role in the instruction The content of the materials should be personalised.

Together with the listening skill, speaking skill is also one important skill that builds up the oral communication competence. In the communicative approach, where the discourse level is used, speaking emphasizes the use of language above the sentence level (Johnson and Morrow, 1981: 70). In fact, teaching speaking in EFL countries cannot be conducted directly above the sentence level. So, the teaching of speaking in the classroom must consider the students’ competence and not force them to be directly able to speak fluently.

TECHNOLOGIES IN ENGLISH LEARNING There are some advantages of technologies in education as mentioned previously.

In accordance with those advantages, the language learning also make use of the technology in the instruction. Related to the use of technology in the English learning, Towndrow and Vallace (2004: 105) contend that the use of IT will work best in language learning when it is conceived of and used as integrated component of a task. They believe that technologies can add value to language learning tasks when it is used as a tool:

1. Making possible activities that could not be done as easily in the print-based activities.

2. Allowing the digital media integration3. Allowing greater flexibility in terms of the time and place of learning for students

and teachers4. Allowing to a wide range information access5. Allowing for both the products and processes of learning focus6. Allowing didactic material to be stored and recycled7. Encouraging discussion and consultation8. Providing a channel for feedback and assesment9. Ignoring the unnecessary duplication of previously produced material10. Saving time, over time

The technology use in the English classroom will also help teachers in providing rich media. Rich media as learning product will incorporate the high-end media such as video, animation, sound and simulation (Reiser & Dempsey, 2007: 312). Those media can also be referred as multimedia, that is the combination of media. The media can be still pictures, sound, motion video, animation, and/ or text items combined in a product with the purpose of communicating information (Roblyer, 2003: 164).

There are five kinds of multimedia formats proposed in Robyler (2003: 164-5). Those are:

1. Commercial multimediaThese pre-packaged products are developed by software publishing company. They offer various media, such as animation, video, audio adn links to the internet.

2. Commercial interactive videodisc packagesThey are the storage medium of choice for full-motion video in combination with text and still picture.

3. Authoring tool: presentation softwareIt primaruly a combination of text, still pictures and limited audio and animation. In its development, it can embed video and audio.

4. Authoring tools: video production and editting The tools enable users to produce digitized video and edit it.

5. Authoring tools: multimedia authoring systemThe tools allow users to include many features in the products.

Digital Stories in Oral English TeachingThe digital storytelling actually is not a new concept. Lambert and the CDS have

provided training and assistance to people interested in creating and sharing their personal narratives since the early 1990s (Center for Digital Storytelling, 2005). The process of taking some series of still images and combining them with a narrated soundtract in a digital story is a crucial component of digital storytelling. Further, James R. Skouge and Kavita Rao (2009) contend that digital storytelling can make use of various techniques including standard storytelling, audio and video recording, multimedia publication, and shared “mediated” events. Digital storytelling can be used in many ways including as a tool to promote self-reflection, to illustrate historical perspectives, to promote inquiry, and as a method of technology integration and ongoing instruction. However, in the

educational use, any integration of technology should take place with careful preparation and thought by teachers and students.

In order to create digital stories, there are seven elements should be taken into account in doing digital storytelling, those are point of view, dramatic questions, emotional content, the gift of your voice, the power of soundtrack, economy and pacing (Center for Digital Storytelling, 2005). The seven elements are presented in Table 1 below:

Table 1. The Seven Elements of Digital Storytelling1 Point of View The story’s point of view and the author’s

perspective. 2 A Dramatic Question a question that will be answered by the end of the

story.3 Emotional Content serious issues that speak to the audience in a

personal and powerful way.4 The Gift of your Voice a way to personalize the story to help the audience

understand the context5 The Power of the

Soundtrackmusic or other sounds that support the storyline.

6 Economy simply put, using just enough content to tell the story without overloading the viewer with too much information.

7 Pacing deals with how slowly or quickly thestory progresses.

The digital stories which are the results of digital storytelling above can be used to introduce content and also capture students attention when teachers start presenting new ideas. Burmark (2004) in Robin (2008) contends that the integration of the visual images and written texts can enhance and accelerate students comprehension. Beside engaging students, the digital stories as a media also can be used to facilitate discussion of the topic presented in the story, help students to understand the abstract and conceptual content Robin (2008).

Since digital stories will be in the form of movie, it has the characteristics of the visual audio media. It can be said that digital stories can provide the benefit that can be given by the video. Harmer (2001:282) mentions that videos in ELT classroom let the students see the language in use, not only hear it, it will allow students to look far beyond the classroom which full of cultural values. It can be inferred that digital stories are richer than the audio tape, so the students can see the speakers whose body movements give cluess to the meaning, the clothes they wear, the location etc.

In relation to the oral English teaching through task-based approach, digital stories can accomodate the six component of tasks (Nunan, 2004: 40-73). The digital stories can be used as the input of the instruction. For example: the teacher develop a set of digital story with the goal of teaching Recount (monologue) to the Grade VIII students. In developing this media, the teacher will be able to accomodate the input of the monologue from the digital story then the activities following it. The teacher can vary the activities in individually or group/ class work. Then there are certain roles that must be played by the teacher such as the facilitator and manager of the class. During the teaching and learning process, students can participate in the classroom.

The digital story also provides some benefits for the oral English teaching as mentioned above. In line with the current “genre based’ curriculum, a digital story can be aimed at teaching monologue with the type of text narrative and recount. It will also provide the students with enough visual and audio input for doing the task. The setting of

the story can be close to the students real world to arise students attraction to the digital story which results in the active participation of the students in the classroom.

A. Designing Digital StoriesThere are some programmes that can be run to create digital stories. Those are: (1)

Microsoft Power Point; (2) Microsoft Photo Story; (3) Adobe Photoshop Elements; (4) Windows Movie Maker; and some other programmes. In this article, the last programme will be explained in detail. Window Movie Maker is a standard programme for Windows which allows users to combine pictures and video footage together with text, music, and naration into a digital video file (TESL-EJ, 2010).

There are some steps in digital storytelling using Movie Maker, those are as follows:

1. Step one: import the pictures, audio and or video and place themIn this step, users can import the files consist of pictures, video or the combination of both. First, click file and import file into collection (see Figure 1). Then, choose the files that are needed for the storytelling. The files needed will appear in the collection (Figure 2). After that, drag the pictures and audio and plot it into the timeline. The pictures can be arranged by dragging and droping them into the other places (see Figure 3). The mp3 files for the audio files are easier to use than the .wav. The phases are presented in Figure 1 to 3 below.

Figure 1. Importing files

Figure 2. Choosing files

Figure 3. Dragging files

2. Step two: add the transitions, effects, and tittles or textsAfter all of the files needed are dragged and dropped in the timeline, the transition can be chosen by clicking collections, then video transition. There are some transaion and effect styles that can be used, The transation and effect should be dragged in the transation timeline as presented in Figure 4. The next phase to give title of the video, click tools, then choose title and credit as in Figure 5 and then decide the title styles of the product.

Figure 4. Transition and Effect

Figure 5. Adding tittles

3. Add the narationTo add more audio naration, Movie Maker can provide users with this opportuniy. The computer should have the microphone. To give the naration to the product, click on timeline/ storyline and click narate timeline, then start narration as presented in Figure 6. By clicking the “start narration” botton, the computer will record the voice.The marker will light in green when the quality of the voice is good.

Figure 6. Adding narration4. Publish the project

The last step after everything has been added is publishing the project. To publish the result of digital storytelling, click Task, choose Finish Movie and choose where the movie will be saved in the computer (See Figure 7).

Figure 7. Finishing the Movie

B. ConclusionThis paper has briefly discussed the digital story in oral English teaching. It starts from the advantages of technologies in English instruction, the digital storytelling, the seven elements of it, the digital stories in oral English teaching and designing digital stories.

Bibliography

Center for Digital Storytelling. 2005. Center for Digital Storytelling Website. Retrievd on August 23 2012 at 01.49 a.m

Nunan, D. 2004. Task-based Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

________ .1989. Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dudeney,G and Hockly, N. 2007. How to Teach English Using Technology (Series Editor: Jeremy Harmer). Essex: Pearson Education Limited (Longman)

Harmer, J. 2001. The Practice of English Language Teaching (3rd Edition). Malaysia: Longman.

Johnson, K. and Morrow, K. 1981. Communication in the Classroom: Applications and Methods for a Communicative Approach (4th impression). Hong Kong: Longman

Lowenthal, P. R. (under review). Digital storytelling—A new instructional technology? Submitted to be included in, Story Circle: Digital Storytelling around the World.Wiley-Blackwell. http://www.patricklowenthal.com/publications/ DigitalStorytelling_%20preprint.pdf July 11 2012 at 09.14 p.m

Reiser, Robert A. & Dempsey, John V.2007. Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology-2nd edition. New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.

Richards, Jack C. 2008. Teaching Listening and Speaking : from Theory to Practice. Singapore: Cambridge university Press.

Robin, Bernard. R. 2008.The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling. Retrieved from http://faculty.coe.uh.edu/brobin/homepage/Educational-Uses-DS.pdf on May 18 2012 at 12.04 p.m

_______________. 2008. Digital Storytelling: A Powerful Technology Tool for the 21st Century Classroom. Theory into Practice 47 (3). 220 - 228

Roblyer, M.D. 2003. Integrating Educational Technology into Teachinhg—3rd edition. New Jersey: Merril Prentice Hall.

Skouge, James R. and Rao, Kavita. 2009. Digital Storytelling in Teacher Education: Creating Transformations through Narrative. Journal Educational Perspective Vol. 48 No 1 and 2 retrieved from www.eric.ed.gov on October 4 2012 at 03.56 a.m

TESL-EJ. 2010. Windows Movie Maker ver 6.0. retrieved from http://www.tesl-ej.org/pdf/ej52/int.pdf on December 25 2011 at 01.15 p.m

Towndrow, Phillip A & Vallance, Michael. 2004. Using IT in Language Classroom: A guide for teachers and students in Asia.Jurong: Pearson Education South Asia Pte Ltd.