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Digital stories: Bringing multimodal texts to the Spanish writing classroom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2016

Ana Oskoz  and
Idoia Elola
Ana Oskoz
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, Baltimore County (email: [email protected])
Idoia Elola
Affiliation:
Texas Tech University (email: [email protected])
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Abstract

Despite the availability and growing use of digital story software for authoring and instructional purposes, little is known about learners’ perceptions on its integration in the foreign language writing class. Following both a social semiotics approach and activity theory, this study focuses on six advanced Spanish learners’ perceptions about the production of a digital story in which they integrated a variety of modes (written, oral, images, sounds) and manipulated the semiotic resources within each mode (size, color, lines in the image mode), to convey meaning. Analyzing participants’ reflections, questionnaires, and online journals, results highlight learners’ (a) interpretation of the tools and artifacts and their effect on their understanding of a final product, (b) connections between short-term goal-oriented actions and the longer-term object-oriented activity of developing a multimodal text, and (c) linguistic reorientations when creating a digital story.

Keywords

Digital storiesmultimodalityactivity theorysocial semioticsFL writing
Type
Regular papers
Information
ReCALL , Volume 28 , Special Issue 3: Multimodal Environments in CALL , September 2016 , pp. 326 - 342
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Copyright
Copyright © European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning 2016 

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Footnotes

*

Both authors participated equally in the making of this article.

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