The Effect of Digital Storytelling on High School Students’ English Writing Skills and Foreign Language Anxiety Levels

Learning a foreign language can be challenging for some students. These problems may arise from various obstacles in the language learning process, like anxiety, difficulty with writing skills, lack of vocabulary, grammatical difficulties, differences in communication styles, lack of motivation, and alike. Considering the technological advances in our time, utilizing information and communication technologies in foreign language teaching can help overcome the difficulties associated with foreign language learning. In this context, digital storytelling is considered important in terms of motivating students and arousing students’ interest by providing opportunities for autonomous work, and using multimedia tools during teaching-learning process of foreign language course. Digital storytelling, which allows students to tell their own stories or topics of their own choosing, is a method that supports learning English with a focus on providing learner autonomy. In this context, this research aims to investigate the effect of digital storytelling method on the writing skills and foreign language anxiety levels of high school students. The research was conducted using an experimental design with 10th-grade students from a high school in Türkiye’s capital city. The 9th-grade writing skills evaluation rubric, 10th-grade writing skills evaluation rubric, foreign language anxiety scale, and interview form were used as data collection tool. The quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS 22, and the qualitative data was analyzed by deductive analysis approach. The results of the study showed that digital storytelling significantly improved students’ English writing skills but did not create a significant difference in their foreign language anxiety levels. The qualitative data showed that the students in the experimental group reported a decrease in their foreign language anxiety, an increase in their interest in the lesson, more enjoyable lessons, and an increase in their motivation to participate in the lesson after the digital storytelling.