Using the Art of Digital Storytelling in Improving the Listening Skills of the Grade 7 students of PIT

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Language is considered as a means of expression and communication among

people and social orders. It has an incredible significance in engaging children to

make their world with all its measurements. Hence, it implies for creating children’s

tangible recognition, mental capacities, and social aptitudes. Through these aptitudes

and capacities, they can communicate inside the school and beyond. Any language

comprises of four essential skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Listening

considers a fundamental ability in language acquisition and learning. It could be a

means of verbal communication among people by utilizing distinctive ways. Listening

is the first condition for developing the language and enriching the linguistic bank of

the child. Hence, it is crucial to look for implementation of modern methodologies in

helping students improve this specific skill in addition to the listening ability, which

includes listening with all the senses and collaboration with the speaker by showing

verbal and non-verbal reactions that show comprehension (Cunsolo Willox et al.,

2012; Ellison & Wang, 2018). Listening plays a critical part in language acquisition; in

this manner, teachers are persistent look for new procedures to develop this ability,

one effective way of helping learners develop this skill is through storytelling where

they tend to acquire information through their sense of hearing. Also, listening skill is

often given a little attention among the other primary skills.

At an early stage of language acquisition, stories can offer a valuable way of

contextualizing and introducing modern language, making it meaningful and

paramount (Wasik & Bond, 2001; Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998; Wright, 2000). They
 Using the Art of Digital Storytelling in Improving the Listening Skills of the Grade 7 students of PIT

are related with sentiments and recollections, as they are a distinctive manifestation of

social values and recognitions. Other than, they display phonetic shapes, grammar,

phrases, lexicon, and equation based discourse inside a significant and organized

setting that supports comprehension of the account world (Glazer & Burke, 1994;

Jennings, 1991; Koisawalia, 2005; Mallan, 1991). This verbal data is commonly

complemented with non-verbal data within the frame of large pictures, which helps

children remake the storyline (Kellerman, 1992; Meyer, 1990; Mueller, 1980; Neu,

1990).

Stahl, (2015) claimed that learning has transformed from traditional into a

modern one based on new educational technologies by its various tools. New

technology introduced many practical solutions to problems of learning English and

listening as well by its different tools. Furthermore, new technology has provided

several tools to improve the listening skills such as many educational websites and

other platforms. Technology has a very effective impact on increasing students’

participation, collaboration, and eagerness to learn new things.

By the rapid technology, development has changed students’ style in learning.

Today’s students or those who were born after 21st century especially they which

called "digital natives” are generation of learning that process information differently

with parents or their teachers when they were in their age. Many experts agree

that the generation of those students can improve their skills with quality e-

learning material (Repnik et al: 2012).

 Using the Art of Digital Storytelling in Improving the Listening Skills of the Grade 7 students of PIT

One of the modern strategies’ teachers can utilize in helping students improve

their listening skills is digital storytelling. Digital narrating has come to light over the

past a long time as a valuable instruction and educating style. It incorporates a greatly

positive impact on propelling the learner to take part within the teaching-learning

process genuinely, which leads to in-depth content, the novelty within the fashion of

introduction, permits the learners to express the information they knew already, and

coordinated it into the substance, in more genuine, intelligently and committed way

(Hamilton et al., 2019; Wu & Chen, 2020).

Digital storytelling is characterized as a collection of the author's stories that

work with an electronic arbiter (CD) by adding some strategies related to sound,

picture, color, vivified pictures, and melodic impacts. These stories depend upon

events, narration and narrating, characters and show lines, and the climax, as well as

the setting and the ethical. All the previous components make language acquisition an

engaging, instructive involvement (Kervin & Mantei, 2017).

Theoretical Framework

This research is carried out to examine the use of digital storytelling in

improving the listening skills of the Grade 7 students of Palompon Institute of

Technology. Therefore, there is underlying theory related to this research namely:

Schema Theory (Barlett F.C. 1932 cited in Alexander, M. & Emmott, C., 2014-

Wagoner, B. 2017). Schemata involved in listening can be categorize into two major

types: language schema and knowledge schema. Firstly, the basis for listening

comprehension, language schema refers to the phonological, lexical, syntactic and

 Using the Art of Digital Storytelling in Improving the Listening Skills of the Grade 7 students of PIT

grammatical knowledge that students already have. According to Widdowson (1978)

cited by Nurphami, S. (2015), “it is unimaginable to achieve satisfactory

comprehension of the listening material without proper storage of the four basic

language knowledge”.

Secondly, the knowledge schema in the listening test, a lot of dialogues are

taken from typical daily life situations. It is generally believed that in these typical

situations like hotel, restaurant, post office, hospital, book store, etc., the stored in

people’s memory is called schemata by cognitive psychologists.

Statement of the Problem

Even in spite of the fact that digital storytelling has been practiced for more than

two decades, a constrained sum of research has been conducted on this innovation

particularly because it has been utilized in instructive setting. Therefore, further study

must be done to look at the feasibility of utilizing digital storytelling in learners to

assess its viability on their language listening comprehension accomplishment. Among

the four primary macro skills in learning, Listening has been considered less and as

observed among the grade-7 students of Palompon Institute of Technology, this

particular skill seems to lack among these students considering that the mode of

learning is different from the previous school year. Hence, listening skills is absolutely

necessary in one’s academic success since it has been regarded as the most widely

used language skill in the classroom.

Research Questions
 Using the Art of Digital Storytelling in Improving the Listening Skills of the Grade 7 students of PIT

1. Is there a significant difference between the pretest and posttest mean scores

of the control group?

2. Is there a significant difference between the pretest and posttest mean scores

of the experimental group?

3. Is there a significant difference between the control and experimental group in

terms of language listening comprehension after the implementation of the

material?

Hypotheses

Ho: There is no significant difference between the pretest and post-test of the control

group

Ho: There is no significant difference between the pretest and post of the experimental

group

Ho: There is no significant difference between the control group and experimental

group on their language listening comprehension of the Grade-7 students

Significance of the Study

This study aims to develop and enhance the listening skills of the grade-7

students of Palompon Institute of Technology through the utilization of Digital

 Using the Art of Digital Storytelling in Improving the Listening Skills of the Grade 7 students of PIT

Storytelling. This research revolves around certain methodologies in order to assess

and investigate the effectivity of the research tool. This will contribute to the emerging

problems among the listening skill defects of the students and produce a teaching

strategy that integrates the use of technology considering that this era is primarily

consisted of digital advancements.

Results of this research will also benefit the English Language teachers in

different schools because they will know if it is really effective to use the art of digital

storytelling in improving the listening skills of the students. The use of digital storytelling

will transform their lessons from traditional to a more advance way of teaching listening

skills. Moreover, the results should provide some evidence to teachers who feel that

digital storytelling consumes a lot of time.

Scope and Delimitation

This study centers on finding digital storytelling effective in developing the

listening skills of the students. The researchers will be accommodating sixty (60) grade

-7 participants of PIT Laboratory High School where in thirty (30) of these participants

will serve as the controlled group and the other half of the class will serve as the

experimental group. The study only focuses on proving the effectiveness of digital

storytelling in developing the listening skills through investigated student assessments

and will not cover any other areas.

Literature Review

The skill of listening plays an important role not only in educational lives but also

in every individuals’ lives. It pays a contribution to effective communication and

 Using the Art of Digital Storytelling in Improving the Listening Skills of the Grade 7 students of PIT

language acquisition however, listening in educational environments does not get

enough importance and is generally neglected. The emergence of technology has

become the factor which makes teacher more creative in developing and designing their

teaching materials. The success of using technology and digital media can make

teacher easily present their teaching material and help students to get more from the

material. Despite the advantages of using digital stories, there are few studies on the

use of digital stories in language skill areas, specifically on listening.

According to Byme (1986) as cited in Andrade and Ixamara (2016), considered

listening as an active process. He claimed also that when one listens to his mother

tongue, understanding frequently seems effortless because the experience of the

spoken language is enormous. When going back to the time we were born, we are

exposed to some different languages and speakers, and various topics.

Our experience gives us knowledge and information through listening and so,

we, the listeners can quickly identify messages, phonological and grammatical patterns,

and lexical item. Language experience causes awareness of all the factors that help

determine what might happen come. Yildirim and Yildirim (2016) stated that listening is

an essential element incompetent language performance of adult second language

learners, whether they communicate at school, at work, or in the community. Listening

is used almost twice that of speaking and speaking fold writing and reading.

Weda et. al. (2016) proved that the use of digital media helped students in

understanding more about the listening material in the classroom and makes them

interested in learning listening. Moreover, digital media is an effective way to involve

 Using the Art of Digital Storytelling in Improving the Listening Skills of the Grade 7 students of PIT

students with teaching materials and help them to learn language. Digital story telling

(DST) in teaching and learning a language has become an impactful technology that

can be used by the teacher to support them in teaching (Robin, 2006). The importance

of teaching listening by using DST has been proven from the previous research that the

lack of students’ listening was caused by the lack of media used by teachers in teaching

listening in the classroom.

According to Collen (2006), students were divided into two groups, one group

listened and watched two digital stories in class while the other group listened to the two

stories read aloud by the researcher. Listening activities in both classrooms were video

recorded, and during the activities students were required to ask questions about what

they listened to, and in return the researcher also asked questions regarding

comprehension. Students who watched and listened to digital stories concentrated

better and gave more attention during listening. Significantly, they also have the higher

correct answers to the questions on the stories. Verdugo and Belmonte (2007),

examined the effects of digital stories on the listening skills of the 6 th year students in a

quasi-experimental, and concluded that students in the experimental group

outperformed the control group.

Digital storytelling not only offers language teachers the chance of working with

all four language skills including listening from the very beginning, but also it brings

together the idea of combining the art of storytelling integrated with a variety of digital

multimedia such as recorded audio narration, video, and music. It enables the student

to work on their listening skills and acquire fundamental skills that can be advantageous

in the working field such as good communicative language and fluency in foreign
 Using the Art of Digital Storytelling in Improving the Listening Skills of the Grade 7 students of PIT

languages. The students are more motivated when they listen to a story and as a result,

they are very willing in answering the questions and showed active participation during

class discussion.

In the study of Loniza et. al. (2018), children in the experimental group showed

enthusiasm in listening to the storytelling while watching, which is a manifestation that

they are all motivated. They developed higher language listening comprehension skills

as shown in the result of the formative and post-test where they got high scores than

the children in the control group. Teachers could use and/or produce digital stories

instead of using traditional CDs.

 Using the Art of Digital Storytelling in Improving the Listening Skills of the Grade 7 students of PIT

METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents the method and procedures which includes the research

design, research environment, the research subjects, the research instrument as well as

the research statistical treatment that will be exploited throughout the study.

Research Design

This research is a quantitative one and will use a quasi-experimental design with

treatment and control group, employing pretest and post-test. Both groups will be

administered with a pretest to determine the level of comprehension before the

implementation of the program. The study will compose thirty (30) grade-7 students for

the experimental group and the other half (30) will be for the controlled group. To

evaluate the effect of Digital Storytelling material on language listening comprehension

skills of the pupils, the post test on the language learning achievement test will be

administered. It will be done through the help of the teacher. The teacher reads each

question and waits for the pupils to answer. Likewise, the formative test after every

lesson will be administered through the help of the teachers. The results will be checked

and the data will be analyzed using t-test and SPSS.

Research Environment

The research will be conducted at the Palompon Institute of Technology, Laboratory

High School. The said school is located at Evangelista Street, Palompon, Leyte. It

consists of 5 colleges namely College of Maritime Education, College of Technology

and Engineering, College of Arts and Sciences, College of Advance Education, and
 Using the Art of Digital Storytelling in Improving the Listening Skills of the Grade 7 students of PIT

College of Education. PIT also offers Junior High School and Senior High School under

the College of Education. The Senior High School offers academic track (STEM).

Research Respondents

The respondents will be the sixty (60) students of the Junior High School of Palompon

Institute of Technology where a certain method will be used to determine the specific

participants for both the experimental and controlled group.

Data Gathering Procedure

To evaluate the effectiveness of the developed material, the researchers will construct a

language listening comprehension test, which is composed of a 20-item test for pretest

and post-test. Table of specification (TOS) will also be made for achievement test to

establish its validity. The 20 item-test will be based on the five comprehensive lessons

in language, which are included in the integrated material. Lessons, objectives and

activities will be adapted in The Philippine Curriculum of the DepEd. The researcher will

construct three items for each lesson. A multiple type of test was constructed and each

is compose of three choices with only one correct answer for each question. The said

instrument will went through a content validation by the Junior High teachers and

coordinator. Their suggestions and comments will be taken into consideration in revising

the instrument. The result of the evaluation phase will serve as the primary data of this

research study. To determine the validity and acceptability the researcher will perform

the data processing. The rating will be tabulated and organized into tables. The result

will be analyzed and subjected to weighted mean. A data-gathering instrument is

reliable if it is able to elicit stable consistent and dependable data from the respondents.
 Using the Art of Digital Storytelling in Improving the Listening Skills of the Grade 7 students of PIT

The arithmetic means or simply the mean refers to the sum of all the given values or

items in a distribution divided by the number of values or items summed. Moreover, to

determine the effect of the integrated material on the language listening comprehension

of experimental and control group, the researcher will employ t-Test for Independent

group samples. The independent group t-test is a parametric statistical test that

compares the means of two different samples of participants. It indicates whether the

two samples perform so similarly that we could conclude they are likely from the same

population, or whether they perform so differently that we conclude they represent two

different populations.