Digital story-telling has been put into practice to motivate students to improve their speaking skills and to provide opportunity for the students to collaborate and learn from each other, and use multimedia technology that can be useful in the future career.

First of all, students learn how to write a story, and with the help from the teacher edit their own story. After watching an example and learning the features of digital story-telling, they produce their own video of story-telling using available soft-wares of video making and editing. The students then watch the videos in class, evaluate them using an assessment form, and give oral feedback. As a result, the students are capable of giving a long narration and improve their fluency and accuracy. They can also produce interesting and reasonably good quality videos. What is also important, they have become more aware of the criteria of a good digital story-telling and are able to give positive feedback and suggestions for improvement.

To many people, especially adults and teenagers, story-telling is not interesting because it is only for children and they think they already know the story. It is traditionally told by parents at home, teachers at school, or story-tellers in a forum for children to teach them the moral values in the story. If people come to a story-telling session, it is not because of the story, but because of the story teller or her entertaining acting. However, a traditional story-telling can be very interesting and challenging when we modify the story to meet the audience’s interest and use high-tech multimedia to provide visuals that go along the story to maintain the audience’s attention.

When story-telling is made attractive, it can be a very effective method to improve students’ spoken English proficiency. The students will be highly motivated to write a good story, learn English expressions, and practice and drill themselves with the lines and intonation that can influence the audience’s feelings. Besides, the experience of using high-tech multimedia can be very useful in their future career.

Preparation is a crucial stage in producing a digital story telling. Support and help from the teacher are necessary especially in writing the story. Because of limited time, it is almost impossible to learn how to make a video in class from the teacher; therefore, collaboration and learning from peers become very important part of the process. All the pain and hard work will be paid off when they see the class enjoy the video. Besides, learning how to give positive feedback is a life-skill that they get in addition to the English speaking skills.

To conclude, although producing a digital story-telling takes a lot of time, energy, and perhaps also money, the benefits that the students get are not only improvement in speaking skills, but also knowledge and experience with technology and interpersonal skills.