A Study On Teaching Practice Of "Digital Storytelling" From The Perspective Of Constructivism

With the improvement of China’s comprehensive national strength and more frequent international exchanges,the transmission of Chinese culture and Chinese stories has already become an important part of cultural exchange and integration in China,even in the world.However,some scholars state that students know more about the festivals and culture of foreign countries than those of China.It is difficult for them to express Chinese culture in English.The widespread phenomenon of "Chinese Culture Aphasia" leads to failure in"two-way" intercultural communication,wthich has attracted much attention of researchers.Thus they put forward relevant strategies in order to improve the situation.Nevertheless,previous studies reveal that most of the relevant researches on learning English expressions of Chinese culture are basically theoretical explanations,while few empirical researches have been involved.In view of this,based on the theory of constructivism,four cultural topics are selected according to "Insights into Chinese Culture" written by Ye Lang and Zhu Liangzhi(2010).An 8-week teaching practice is carried out in the culture extension internship of second-grade English majors in a university in Changsha to explore the effectiveness of digital storytelling on students’ English expressions of Chinese culture,in order to provide some reference for Chinese culture learning.The specific research questions are as follows:(1)What effects do digital storytelling have on the learning of English expressions of Chinese culture at the university level?(2)What effects do digital storytelling have on students’ learning motivation in learning English expressions of Chinese culture?(3)What are students’ attitudes towards digital storytelling practice?Quantitative and qualitative data are collected before and after the implementation of traditional teaching and digital storytelling practice.Statistical software SPSS 20.0 is used to analyze the data so as to obtain experimental results.The research results show that:(1)Digital storytelling has a positive impact on college students’ English expressions of Chinese culture.And it improves the posttest scores of students on English expressions of Chinese culture.After the experiment,the results of the experimental group are better than those of the control group with significant differences in the oral and writing dimensions.(2)The practice of digital storytelling helps to improve the learning motivation of college students on English expressions of Chinese culture.The scores in task value and self-efficacy of the experimental group are better than those of the control group.(3)Through exploring students’ attitudes towards the practice of digital storytelling,it has found that most students hold a positive attitude towards the teaching practice.They think that digital storytelling could not only enhance their English expressions of Chinese culture and learning motivation,but also provide opportunities to develop their language skills.