應用故事鳥數位故事網站以提升台灣國小學童英文寫作能力：職前英文教師之看法

Perceptions of Storybird Digital Storytelling Website for Promoting Chinese EFL Young Learners' Writing Skills

Digital storytelling can be used to improve learners' writing skills with modeled writing of digital texts (Oakley, 2011). Based on the evaluation criteria proposed by Chapelle (2001), three digital storytelling websites, StoryJumper, Tikatok, and Storybird, have been recently evaluated (Kuo, Chiang, Lin, Cao, & Yen, 2012). Among them, Storybird was considered the most appropriate website for promoting Chinese young EFL learners' writing skills due to better learner fit, better teacher fit, and the 'Class Library' and 'Discussion' supplementary functions. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the digital storytelling-based website, Storybird, for its practicality and learnability, via a threefold assessment: assessing opinions and suggestions toward regular users' functions, toward class users' functions and toward teachers' functions. Twenty-three preservice elementary and secondary school English teachers enrolling in a computer-assisted language learning course were invited to fill out a questionnaire to evaluate the appropriateness of using the digital storytelling Storybird website to promote Chinese EFL young learners' writing skills. A self-developed questionnaire involving 29 Likert-scale questions, with a reliability coefficient of .715, was designed by referencing Liu, Liu and Hwang (2011). In the final section of the questionnaire, three open-ended questions were provided for gathering further opinions and suggestions. The results indicate that Storybird can be used as a supporting tool to facilitate interactive writing and promote peer collaboration for young EFL learners during the digital story creation process. With a high mean score of 4.5 out of a possible 5, results of the Likert-scale survey revealed that most of the participants held a positive attitude toward the potential effects of Storybird for promoting young EFL learners' writing skills. Suggestions for improving Storybird include using multiple artists' pictures in one storybook, increasing the number of collaborators, improving the spelling-check function and having a comment column on each page. Moreover, new suggested additional functions include a grammar correction function, a storybook categorizing function in the Reading List, plus animation and audio/video versions.Oakley（2011）指出透過數位故事範本能增進學童之寫作能力。根據Chapelle（2001）所提出之電腦輔助語言學習工具評估標準，在先驅研究中本研究團隊首先評估StoryJumper、Tikatok及Storybird三個數位故事網站之合適性（Kuo，Chiang，Lin，Cao，＆Yen，2012）。相較於其他兩個網站，Storybird網站提供適合5種年齡層讀者閱讀之數位故事、提供多種適合教師使用之功能，並且提供「班級圖書館」及「討論版」等功能，因此本研究團隊5名研究者一致評定其為最能增進以英語為外語學童寫作能力之學習網站。透過Storybird網站所提供之「普通」使用者、「教室」使用者，以及「教師」使用者三種帳號功能構面，本研究旨在評估該數位故事網站之實用性及可學性。研究對象為二十三位修習「電腦輔助語言學習」課程之職前中小學英文教師。在參與2小時Storybird網站介紹及實際操作工作坊後，職前英文教師完成問卷填寫以評估該數位故事網站能否作為提升台灣國小學童英文寫作能力之輔助教學工具。問卷編制參考Liu，Liu及Hwang（2011）之設計概念，共有29題李克特五點量表問卷，問卷信度為.715。本問卷並包含三題開放式題項，以收集更多職前教師之見解及建議。研究結果顯示，多數受測職前英文教師認為Storybird數位故事網站適合作為增進學童互動書寫及同儕合作之英文教學輔助工具。職前英文教師並提出提升Storybird網站功能之具體建議，包含「在同一本數位故事書裡能使用一位以上畫家之畫作」、「增加共同作者之數量」、「改進拼字檢查之功能」及「在數位故事書每一頁皆有給予評論之功能」。此外，職前教師們建議可增加新功能，如「文法檢查」、「書櫃分類功能」及提供「音效、動畫、影片數位故事版本」。