Using Digital Storytelling to Enhance Students’ Cross-Cultural Competence in Learning Foreign Language: Teachers’ and Students’ perspectives

Abstract

Digital learning has improved language teaching and learning by adding new and innovative techniques that will help learners foster their language competences. Correspondingly, the present study seeks to raise teachers and EFL learners’ awareness towards the importance of integrating digital storytelling to enhance EFL learners’ cross-cultural competence. The needed data was collected by means of quantitative descriptive method in which two questionnaires were administered to fifty first-year master students and fifteen teachers at the department of Letters and English Language, University of 8 May 1945, Guelma. The results showed that both teachers and learners are aware of the significance of being cross-culturally competent. Moreover, the participants insisted on the important role digital technology plays in teaching the target culture. Accordingly, the acquired data confirmed the research validity, which implies that both teachers and learners have a positive attitude towards using digital storytelling to enhance students’ cross-cultural competence. Thus, it is recommended that teachers must integrate more technological tools in the classroom, and raise learners’ awareness towards the importance of using digital storytelling to enhance their cultural communicative competence.