Using digital storytelling to promote authorial agency in learning English as a foreign language: a case study of female EFL college learners in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), learning English goes beyond replicating assigned content by emphasising students’ linguistic competence, in particular the ability to produce coherent texts. An integral part of the Saudi Arabia Vision 2030 is to incorporate students’ real-life experiences as meaning creators through advanced technologies. In order to prepare Saudi English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students to meet the Saudi Arabian 2030 expectations, this study sought to explore a pedagogical approach to reflecting students’ real experiences in their specific contexts, using language alongside other meaning-making resources. Specifically, I employed digital storytelling as a creative avenue to provide students with space to take initiative within their learning process and promote other competencies alongside students’ linguistic competence. By digital storytelling, I refer to a pedagogical method used in the English language classroom to share personal stories and express oneself using multimedia tools. Through digital storytelling, I was keen to explore how students deployed their linguistic competence in the context of their real-life experiences to express their own voices and lived experiences using written language alongside other meaning-making resources, a process known as authorial agency. In this thesis, the term authorial agency is defined as the capacity for an author or a text producer to act in ways that give them power and knowledge as they negotiate discourses in their practices. The findings of this research will provide stakeholders and policymakers at the Saudi Ministry of Education with a rationale for the importance of integrating a rich learning environment in the form of digital storytelling in the Saudi college curriculum. This would change the dominant ideology of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in the Saudi context from a teacher-centred approach to a student-centred approach, enabling students to employ meaning-making resources of their own for more authentic purposes. This study also seeks to demonstrate the affordance of combining both the multimodal and composing processes of authorial agency by enabling participants to locate their subjectivity in discursive construction, aligning with the objectives outlined for 21st-century skills in the Saudi Vision 2030. This perspective provides valuable insights into how to offer students subject positions that resonate with the goals of the Saudi Vision 2030. It emphasises pedagogical discourse that encourages the use of language as a tool for reflecting the social realities of students in a digital format, as opposed to rote memorisation of written abstract essays.

Date of Award	2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Western Sydney University
Supervisor	Lynde Tan (Supervisor) & Criss Jones Diaz (Supervisor)