Developing cooperative learning in a content and language integrated learning context to enhance elementary school students' digital storytelling performance, English speaking proficiency, and financial knowledge

Background StudyEnglish education has been promoted in Taiwan for many years. Recently, content and language integrated learning (CLIL) has received attention as an effective way to integrate English into real-life contexts. With advances in technology, digital storytelling is suitable for students to develop multiple skills such as narrating real-life stories and recording them in English. ObjectivesThe present study developed a cooperative learning model in a CLIL context to enhance elementary school students' digital storytelling, English speaking proficiency performance, and financial knowledge. MethodsThe participants were 43 sixth-grade students from two classes: the experimental group (n = 26) and the control group (n = 17). To investigate whether the digital storytelling results produced by the experimental group under the cooperative learning approach differed from the digital storytelling results produced individually by the control group, an experimental design was implemented throughout the 9-week course. All the participants took financial knowledge and English-speaking proficiency pre-tests and then received financial knowledge classes and digital storytelling instruction to help them effectively design digital storytelling videos, which incorporated the concepts of financial knowledge and English-speaking skills. Results and ConclusionsThe results showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in the overall digital storytelling performance, English speaking proficiency, and financial knowledge.