The Effect of Interactive Digital Storytelling on Kindergarteners’ Learning of Challenging English Phonemes in their Foreign Language

Abstract

This thesis investigated the effectiveness of non-interactive digital storytelling (DST) and different degrees of interactive digital storytelling (IDST) in addressing the challenges Saudi EFL kindergartners face in perceiving and distinguishing the English /p/ and /b/ phonemes. It also explored the kindergartners’ enjoyment of DST and different formats of IDST. The thesis involved 125 Saudi EFL kindergartners. The research design included four experimental groups—non-interactive DST, non-targeted IDST, targeted IDST, and highly-targeted IDST— and a control group with non-interactive DST. All experimental groups experienced the same story content presented in different formats, while the control group was exposed to a non interactive DST with different content. Data were collected using a pre- and post-test to measure children’s phoneme perception across words with varying familiarity based on their frequency in the kindergarteners’ curricula. Additionally, a five-point rating task was used to assess children’s enjoyment of different types of DST. The results showed that all experimental groups outperformed the control group in phoneme perception. Thus, encountering the phonemes more times (i.e., 10 vs. 89) has clear learning benefits. Turning to the experimental conditions, results demonstrated that targeted and highly targeted interactivity improved performance. In Study 1, there was no difference in phoneme perception between the non-interactive DST and the non-targeted IDST groups. Study 2 revealed that the targeted IDST group significantly outperformed the non-targeted IDST group on both familiar and novel word items. In Study 3, no difference in performance was found between the targeted IDST and highly-targeted IDST groups. Across all three studies, children in the IDST groups reported greater enjoyment of the digital stories compared to those in the non-interactive DST group. i Overall, the findings indicate that the amount of phoneme input in DST and IDST learning conditions is crucial for enhancing phoneme perception. While interaction in IDST generally benefits phoneme learning, targeted interactive activities focusing on specific phonemes yield the most significant improvements. The results demonstrate that interactivity not only enhances kindergartners’ phoneme learning but also boosts their enjoyment.