No abstract

The present study aims to investigate whether a 12-week digital storytelling (DST) intervention could improve Chinese university EFL students’ speaking skills. The entire population for this study consisted of 100 English major undergraduates from 2 intact classes of EFL students that were taught by the same teacher. Each class contained 50 participants. The experimental group students participated in the DST intervention and were exposed to the DST activities both inside and outside classroom while the control group students only received conventional whole-class instruction. Statistical analysis within groups showed that there was a significant difference between the pretest and posttest means in the experimental group with a large effect size (p = 0.000, d = 1.58), but that there was no significant difference between the pretest and the posttest in the control group (p = 0.056). Statistical analysis between groups indicated that the pretest mean of the experimental group was not significantly different from that of the control group (p = 0.084). However, there was a significant difference between the posttest means of the experimental group and the control group, and the effect size was large (p = 0.001, d = 0.658). DST participants obviously outperformed the control group in terms of speaking skills after the treatment. In addition, the quantitative data elicited through the questionnaire on the value of the DST intervention revealed that 82% of the respondents indicated that digital storytelling allowed them to improve their technical skills, 62% claimed that digital storytelling improved their ability to apply knowledge to practice. 95% of students considered in their diaries that the DST intervention was interesting, challenging, helpful, and enjoyable and contributed to the development of students’ autonomous learning. Most of the interviewees claimed that DST intervention could not only improve their language skills but also their learner autonomy. The findings call attention to the value of DST used in this study for language instruction.

No abstract

The quality of the physical language signals to which learners are exposed and which result in neurobiological activity leading to perception constitutes a variable that is rarely, if ever, considered in the context of language learning. It deserves some attention. The current study identifies an optimal audio language input signal for Chinese EFL/ESL learners generated by modifying the physical features of language-bearing audio signals. This is achieved by applying the principles of verbotonalism in a dichotic listening context. Low-pass filtered (320 Hz cut-off) and unfiltered speech signals were dichotically and diotically directed to each hemisphere of the brain through the contralateral ear. Temporal and spatial neural signatures for the processing of the signals were detected in a combined event-related potential (ERP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment. Results showed that the filtered stimuli in the left ear and unfiltered in the right ear (FL-R) configuration provided optimal auditory language input by actively exploiting left-hemispheric dominance for language processing and right-hemispheric dominance for melodic processing, i.e., each hemisphere was fed the signals that it should be best equipped to process—and it actually did so effectively. In addition, the filtered stimuli in the right ear and unfiltered in the left ear (L-FR) configuration was identified as entirely non-optimal for language learners. Other outcomes included significant load reduction through exposure to both-ear-filtered FL-FR signals as well as the confirmation that non-language signals were recognized by the brain as irrelevant to language and did not trigger any language processing. These various outcomes will necessarily entail further research.