p–ISSN: 2723 - 6609 e-ISSN: 2745-5254

Vol. 5, No. 10, October 2024 http://jist.publikasiindonesia.id/

Indonesian Journal of Social Technology, Vol. 5, No. 10, October 2024 4144

Examining The Impact of Digital Story-Based Learning on

English Four Skills for Young Learners

Winda Mayasari Pandiangan

, Made Hery Santosa

, IGA Lokita Purnamika

Utami

Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha, Indonesia

Email: [email protected]

*Correspondence

ABSTRACT

Keywords: digital stories;

english four skills;

learning material; young

learners.

Currently, using technology is meaningful and brings lots of

changes to our lives as human beings. Especially in the

education process, technology has supported the education

progress of teachers and students. Combining and applying

technology in teaching-learning processes, especially in

education technology, has an essential effect on the teaching

process. Introduce technology and its part to the students

expected to help them improve their ability and support their

development. Technology in education, including the digital

form, brings the students a new way of fun learning. This

study explores the impact of using digital stories in English

four skills learning for young learners. The research was

obtained by doing a literature review of the impact of digital

stories on young learners. A current research study indicates

the effects of digital stories on the development of the four

English skills of young learners. The current research

findings show that digital stories impact students' writing

skills, including grammar and ideas or content of written

stories.

Introduction

English has become an essential subject in many schools in Indonesia, not only

private but also public schools. Therefore, teaching English has become an important area

to improve in preparing the learning material that raises the positive impact of supporting

the student’s needs during the teaching and learning process. The teaching and learning

process impacts the students and teachers in many aspects, including student achievement

and understanding. However, teaching English is a complex learning and teaching

process. Some difficulties might be found during the teaching-learning process in Asia,

including Indonesia taken from (Koo et al., 2008) conducted some problematic issues,

including time of allocation, the using English as a medium of instruction, centralization

of English, teachers and English entering the national examination. The difficulties were

found compared with the teaching and learning process in the classroom, where the

students are expected to follow and achieve the curriculum standard in the school, while

Examining The Impact of Digital Story-Based Learning on English Four Skills for Young

Learners

Indonesian Journal of Social Technology, Vol. 5, No. 10, October 2024 4145

the teacher is one of the aspects found challenging when teaching English in the

classroom. Therefore, there will be a gap between the teacher and the students that

impacted one another during the teaching and learning process. The students impact the

teacher's support and ability during the process. The problems affected the students,

especially in the teaching-learning process, when applied to young learners' learning

activities. Young learners refer to learners that are divided into several levels, as adapted

from Elis (2014). Young learners are divided into groups, from preschool to secondary

students. It started from 2 to 5 years until 15 to 17 years.

Considering the different ages of learners and needs, Kersten and Andreas (2013)

mentioned that teaching a second language or L2 for young learners requires specific

teaching-learning approaches. Young learners need the best and most enjoyable teaching-

learning process that helps them understand the material and achieve their learning goals,

considering that there are challenges between English teaching and preparing the best

way of learning compared to the young learners' approaches to learning. Therefore, the

teaching-learning process is expected to prepare the learning media or tools that support

the students and will be a fun way of teaching in the same way. There are several ways to

focus on developing the teaching-learning process, including the method and media used

to support the learning material. Many options of teaching can be used and adapted from

the rapid technological development, summarised by (Clarke & Adam, 2012) about the

use of digital technologies and its necessity in many fields, including how it brings

another method or technique for teaching in education, promotes the digital stories as one

of method that raises the effective learning that important for education itself. Technology

itself brings new ways of teaching and learning that are also expected to support student's

needs and achievements in the classroom.

Technology and teaching have connected in recent years, and they work to support

one another. Technology impacts many aspects, especially in education, including the

potential and engagement of young learners in language learning, especially in four

fundamental language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Summarised by

Underwood (2009), technologies have the power and potential to change the way

education is practiced and able to change the way the world works; however, it is

considered as raising issues of challenges and practice of using technology besides the

effect. Technology is expected to change how students learn and potentially affect the

achievement of learning standards. Combined technology and education have emerged as

dynamic and innovative teaching-learning tools to engage and support the students’ four

English skills. Technology will potentially enhance the student’s English skills if the tools

used have a powerful impact on the students in the teaching and learning process.

Therefore, a teacher needs to understand the potential of technology and the tools used to

support the student's needs. The tools are expected to support the teaching and learning

process in a fun way as young learners will use them. Several media or tools used in

technology can be developed as media learning in the classroom, including digital stories.

Digital stories, as the media that provides audio or visuals, including the story's structure

and content, offer an engagement for the learning experience to approach young learners.

Winda Mayasari Pandiangan, Made Hery Santosa, IGA Lokita Purnamika Utami

Indonesian Journal of Social Technology, Vol. 5, No. 10, October 2024 4146

One of the media used to teach young learners, digital stories, is one of the optional media

that could be used to support teaching-learning using technology. Using digital stories,

the students will learn actively through animation or video, mainly used to stimulate the

students’ knowledge and understanding, which is more enjoyable than traditional

teaching. The digital stories bring new learning experiences and methods to ensure the

students are involved together, empower their critical thinking or information capturing,

and enhance the material learning comprehension.

This current research focuses on using digital stories in teaching teaching-learning

for young learners. Digital stories are one of the media for teaching language, which the

media presents by providing paragraphs and pictures to create an exciting story for

readers. According to (Girmen & Kaya, 2019), like a digital movie or video, a digital

story typically comprises still and moving images, text, sounds, music, and voice

narrative to depict an important event, person, position, or condition. Continuously

discussing digital stories, Calik and Munise (2021) mentioned that digital stories, which

appeal to visual and auditory senses, are highly memorable and exciting and are a

preferred tool in many fields, including education. Based on the theories of digital stories

and expectations of using digital stories for young learners, the digital stories here refer

to the media of stories that contain audio or visual considered that the digital story could

be one of the media that could help the student's English learning with fun and enjoyment

at the same time. The research will explore the use of digital stories by young learners

by doing library research. By examining the previous research about the effect of digital

stories, the study aims to shed light on the effectiveness of using digital stories in the

classroom and its implication for the holistic development of young learners’ four skills

and abilities. The finding is expected to gain information about the effectiveness of using

digital stories that might help the teaching-learning process for young learners, which will

be helpful in writing, speaking, reading, listening, and development.

Method

This study adopts a qualitative approach through a comprehensive literature review,

adapted from Denney and Tewksbury (2013), highlighted that this database will primarily

feature academic journal articles that the library either does or does not subscribe to and

is increasingly common with articles being available in digital format for download

instantly. This current investigation and study are diverse in supporting the data gained

and the purpose of the literature review. The research academic journal focuses on

research about digital stories in English learning for young learners. The categories of the

journal reviewed were focused on the effect of digital stories on young learners and

English four skills. The selected journal review has taken about ten years since it was

published and applied to young learners as the participants. The findings will be

elaborated on to gain information and data about how the digital stories affected the four

English skills of young learners. The data will elaborate and connect one other related

research to show and compare the research design, number of participants, how the data

was gained to collect the results and findings, how the data were analyzed, and the

Examining The Impact of Digital Story-Based Learning on English Four Skills for Young

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Indonesian Journal of Social Technology, Vol. 5, No. 10, October 2024 4147

findings for each research journal regarding the effect of digital stories used. The data

was collected and presented in a table to show the results of the literature review of

gaining data to present the summary. However, the findings of this current research are

also expected to find the weaknesses and strengths of using digital stories for young

learners. By finding the strengths and weaknesses of using digital stories, this current

research expects to see the comparison gap among all the reviewed journals that will be

used as the references for using digital stories or a light knowledge for doing future

research that focuses on the effect of using digital stories for young learners to develop

teaching and learning process using technology.

Results and Discussion

Considering that English teaching for young learners can be delivered in many

alternative ways and could be developed using technology, the effect of using digital

stories for young learners is continuously discussed. In this section, the current literature

review presents the results of the effectiveness of using digital stories for young learners.

It engages the comprehensive discussion of the findings from reviewing relevant

literature in academic journals that are qualified to support this current research. The

review of related journals shows the data about the various effects connected with the

number of participants and how the previous researchers elaborated the observation to

gain the data and information in both qualitative and quantitative methods. The

meaningful findings offer current knowledge within the theory and provide valuable

discussion to interpret. They are navigated by the theories used, methodologies, and

empirical case studies. The current research found that through the elaboration of theory

and academic journals.

Digital stories affect the Listening skills.

Digital stories have impacted the students' listening comprehension; Verdugo and

Isabel (2007) researched using a digital story focusing on listening comprehension skills.

The participants are Spanish students who use English as a second language. The research

focused on the experimental group and found some effects after post-treatment. The

research found that digital stories affected listening comprehension, including basic

linguistic structure and students' vocabularies. In the same way, this research promotes

digital stories as the media that is competent to both students' backgrounds, native and

non-native students. However, in the same way, the digital stories here also have

weaknesses because they sometimes could have technical problems, including poor sound

quality and a slower story-telling pace. As continuously discussed by (Selin et al., 2021),

digital stories improve students' listening ability, motivation, and engagement. It shows

that the students answered when interviewed that the digital stories successfully

developed students' attention, motivation, and learning engagement. Another support

journal relates to this research; another research focuses on the effect of digital stories

and the listening comprehension promoted by Rokni (2013), who argued that using digital

stories impacted the students' listening and pronunciation. Listening and speaking are

connected here because they are stimulated to say the words after the listening section is

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Indonesian Journal of Social Technology, Vol. 5, No. 10, October 2024 4148

given. The digital stories here also promote self-confidence in reciting words. It works

with listening and helps teach vocabulary and sentence structure. The sentence structure

in the digital stories supports the student's progress in producing or following the foreign

language. This research also argued that digital stories help students understand English

culture and give them another perspective on English and its culture. Deeper on using

digital stories for English listening skills, Tarikunlu (2019) researched how using digital

stories positively impacts different levels with different skills. The research gained data

about the connection between the listening and watching skills that connected one another

and argued that digital stories also affected learners from many language backgrounds,

especially those who use English as the L3 or third language. The digital stories provide

the voice and meaningful visuals for the student's learning progress. From that research,

the digital stories can be applied in the classroom even though they are used in classes

with different cultural and language backgrounds.

To enrich the discussion, (Yaylacı et al., 2020) examined digital stories as one of

the alternative teachings with other styles. The new style of teaching stories in the form

of technological tools delivers and improves the effectiveness of listening skills. Not only

does it work for listening skills, but using digital stories has impacted cultural awareness

and understanding. Mentioned from the research that the class would be interactive

because the digital stories stimulate the students to explore and translate words found.

Continuously discussed focus on listening skills; not only addressed the light shed of

using digital stories in positive impact, contra with previous research about the positive

effect on listening skills, another research, Demirbas and Ayfer (2022), investigated the

effect of a digital story on listening comprehension in primary school students. This

research concluded that paper-based reading-assisted instruction had positively impacted

listening comprehension skills. In the same way, this research presented that there is no

significant effect between pre- and post-experimental after doing a test. Therefore, this

research contrasts with the previous journal that promotes the positive use of digital

stories; here, the research mentioned other factors that might be affected by the process

of using digital stories. The adverse effects of digital stories are that they are distracting,

time-consuming, and quickly dull for students. This research found no full impact of using

digital stories on the listening skills of young learners. Further, the result found that the

environmental factors of learners, including experience and personal character, also

impacted the study's outcome. However, the researcher was promoted to the teacher to do

the training to create a digital story that supports or improves the student's listening

comprehension. The journal's conclusion focused on listening skills affected by digital

stories; the teacher must also organize or understand the content of the digital stories,

which is expected to develop the student's knowledge. The content choice would be

impacted as the digital stories are primarily used in the classroom, and almost all the

students use English as their second or third language. The effect of using the digital story

for listening skills impacts the words they use. The process of listening helps the students

to check their knowledge. The consistency of using digital stories gives the students

another way to express themselves and helps them develop their listening skills. The

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Indonesian Journal of Social Technology, Vol. 5, No. 10, October 2024 4149

sounds and pronunciation they heard from the digital stories when they were read helped

them check their understanding, enrich their knowledge, and enlighten their listening

skills. Another finding that could be elaborated on is that digital stories suit intercultural

students. In other words, digital stories can be used by students who use English as a

second or third language in their learning process.

Digital stories affect Speaking skills.

Digital stories have impacted speaking skills; a more profound review from Ameer

(2014) found that the primary school learning process using digital stories was used

https://kindersite.org/. The researcher found that the primary learners have impacted their

vocabulary (single words) by implementing digital stories. Moreover, the research argued

that developing vocabularies through digital stories is one of the strategies used to teach

young learners students. The research argued that vocabulary is also impactful for

speaking, reading, writing, and listening skills. From the research findings, to support the

development of vocabularies, conclude from Ameer (2014) that the use of digital stories

can be promoted as the content or websites selected for children to develop their English

language and the elements of the English language. Focus on vocabulary development,

digital stories become a facilitator that supports students to improve their words

progressively. It raised the experiment and corrected answers that appeared during the

experimental group. They were mainly connected to listening comprehension and other

skills and continuously discussed Lee's (2014) research on digital stories news for

language learners. This research involved the L2 students’ Spanish natives who use voice

threads to create and exchange digital story news. The result promoted the use of digital

stories that power the students' self-expression, self–reflection, and interaction to bring

the students a sense of community that helps them work in supporting one another,

including feedback and help. Regarding the use of digital stories for developing English

four skills, there are other skills developed when using digital stories in the classroom for

young learners. The student improved their literature, cognitive, and personal skills using

technology and learning material through digital stories and media. (Puspha & Reddy,

2022) promoted that digital stories also affect students' success, creativity, concentration,

and vocabulary memory development. Additionally, this digital story delivers literacy

advancement, community building, and skills. The development skills also impacted the

students' listening and speaking skills. Students can express their words after reading the

digital stories, which impacts their understanding of words or content. The vocabulary

that they found supported their pronunciation if they continuously practiced the new

words they heard or read from digital stories. The digital stories enrich and enhance the

student's knowledge of their critical thinking about the content and reflect on how the

students pronounce or use the words. It gives the students reflection on how to use the

words in daily speaking. Another support for supporting students' speaking skills comes

from (Nugraha et al., 2018), who focus on using digital stories to engage the students to

develop their motivation and change to present their work. The students are challenging

their speaking ability during the presentation. The digital stories impacted their

motivation and solved the problem during the class learning. The findings show that the

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Indonesian Journal of Social Technology, Vol. 5, No. 10, October 2024 4150

students can record their voices and develop whether they need to. The digital stories

improve their critical thinking and logic to work with their group or personally. However,

despite discussing the positive impact, digital stories are also time–consuming and get

bored quickly. This also is a consideration to the teacher that most of the time learning

will be dull using digital stories.

Digital stories affect the Reading skills.

Digital stories have impacted reading skills, as summarised by (Prahasti et al., 2023)

and (Purba et al., 2021) a light conclusion from both researchers was found that

vocabulary development will continuously impact reading skills. The digital stories

supported the students' vocabulary during reading activities. The process of vocabulary

development continuously impacted the student's English skills. In the same line with

these findings, (Rahmasari, 2023) researched that digital stories have advantages in

enhancing the student's literacy awareness; despite encouraging the students to have extra

reading text, focusing on the exciting story would benefit students to learn. Consistent

learning fully impacts the students' phonological skills and motivation. However, the

research also found that digital stories need to improve during the use of digital stories.

The internet connection will cause difficulties in the process of learning. Another contra

of this research was that digital stories have no quizzes or questions, and students are not

challenged to read or practice at home. Preparing digital stories with quizzes or questions

to develop the student's needs would be a good challenge. In the same line with previous

research, (Shokhayev et al., 2024) argued that digital stories impact the student's literacy

in a historical context. At the same time, the student's reading skills are improved as they

can recognize and understand the content of the historical text. The relation between

reading skills and text could be seen in the students' results after using the digital stories

during the learning class. The students develop their critical thinking, content analysis,

and understanding of the content during the reading process. The reading process

produces the literacy progression while implementing digital stories. Reading itself not

only works with vocabulary development but also the literacy skills and phonological.

Continuously discussing how digital stories affect reading skills, digital stories, and

games also improve students' language literacy skills. (Hoefflin et al., 2018) promote that

English digital stories are connected to the student's primary language skills and

cognitive, social, and psychomotor skills. Other skills improved, and the student's

grammar developed during the digital stories in the learning activities process. (Zeynep

& Önsoy, 2018) researched that there is a significant influence difference between

traditional and digital stories. It can be seen from the student’s reading comprehension

outcome and effectively improve.

The previous researcher connected digital stories to reading skills. Digital stories

mostly improve the students' literacy awareness, allowing them to focus on literacy and

become aware of their writing, vocabulary, and reading abilities. Digital stories also

encourage students' curiosity about the text and understanding of reading content,

including the student’s pronunciation and phonological skills. Additionally, the digital

stories improved the students' critical and analytical thinking while reading digital stories.

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Indonesian Journal of Social Technology, Vol. 5, No. 10, October 2024 4151

Continuously talk about the effect of digital stories, which has impacted language,

cognitive, social, psychomotor, and grammatical skills. The digital stories mostly

impacted the English structure or grammar because the students saw and recognized the

words during the reading process.

Digital stories affect the Writing skills.

Last but not least, writing skills that are impacted by digital stories; Zakaria and

Azlina (2019) conducted a study examining the influence of digital stories on ESL

narrative writing skills, in which the research implemented the quasi-experimental

method. Furthermore, the research addressed the effects of using DS on various aspects

of writing, including the story's content, grammar and structure, development of

vocabulary, and student performance. Here, the researcher found that the DS enhanced

the students' writing abilities and showed a significant difference between pre-and post-

test. Continuously discussing the digital story, another journal from Ginting et al. (2021)

obtained data about using digital story media through observation, field notes, and writing

tests. The data showed the effect of digital stories on students’ writing achievement,

learning activities, and performance in the classroom. Focus on teachers' consistency, the

students have progressed and developed the writing skills to write a paragraph text. Focus

on the teaching; the teaching has a central point to help the student improve during the

teaching activities. Continuously discussed the effect of digital stories, digital stories have

impacted reading skills, supported in the same way as improving English skills; another

development impacted by using digital stories for young learners, supported by Gulseren

(2021), who conducted research that focuses on the effect of digital stories to improve

vocabulary and language skills; it showed from the student’s consideration and language

learning perception. The students can explore and enhance their vocabularies during

English vocabulary development. The research was gained with preparatory students. The

research promotes the exposure of digital stories that enrich the student's vocabulary,

which improves their reading and listening abilities. A high significance was found

between pre- and post-experimental classes that addressed the potential use to develop

writing skills. Deeper into how digital stories affect writing skills, Demirbas and Sahin

(2023) examined the effect of using digital stories that also impacted creative writing in

primary schools. This research found that the digital stories affected the wiring ability,

and the story maps were used during the pre- and post-experimental classes. The learners

have developed their wiring ability using the various digital stories applied in the

classroom. Concerning writing ability, the digital stories also affected the students

grammatically as they learned to work with the structure of text and parts of speech.

Conclusion

Concluding insight from many academic journals, the current study explores how

using digital stories in teaching English four skills to young learners positively impacts

the students' skills, especially in improving their grammar and pronunciation. Compiling

and utilizing digital stories has proven effective for approaching students in English

learning activities. It has shown how digital stories have enhanced the students' English

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Indonesian Journal of Social Technology, Vol. 5, No. 10, October 2024 4152

skills and engaged with their learning process and experiences, providing them with

active and comprehensive tools and learning styles in the modern era. Through the

extensive literature review, the study defined the advantages of using digital stories to

foster active listening activity and impact skills, including encouraging the student's

articulation and nurturing expressive speaking. The digital stories also impacted how the

students developed their perspectives about cultures, enhancing and influencing their

critical and logical thinking. Moreover, using digital stories gives the students an idea of

how to express their writing skills; in other self-development, the students can improve

their self-confidence and motivation. It is connected because digital stories provide the

scripts and dialogues that impact their writing skills and reinforce their vocabulary usage.

The utility of digital stories offers a dynamic and enjoyable way for teaching young

learners to connect them with communicative competencies, learning achievement, and

milestones simultaneously. However, from the journals reviewed, there needed to be

more information about the digital stories that affected reading skills. It is the new

research consideration to find the specific positive effect of reading skills for young

learners, as reading is also one of the skills that must be developed and improved during

the teaching and learning process to support the students and learning achievement.

However, the digital stories findings not only focus on the positive effects but also the

negative findings. The negative findings are about the potential of digital stories to make

students tedious and time-consuming and the limitations of using digital stories in

classroom settings.

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