Review of A Systematic Review of Digital Storytelling in Improving Speaking Skills by Viknesh Nair and Melor Md Yunus

    Educational systems frequently employ technological equipment in a variety of ways to make lessons in an English Language classroom fun and meaningful. For both students and instructors, digital storytelling (DST) has evolved into a useful instructional tool that can be utilised in the teaching and learning process. To answer the research question on the role of digital storytelling in improving students’ speaking skills, The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) was used to systematically review 45 articles sourced from Google scholar and ERIC, and most of these articles highlight the importance of digital storytelling as a contemporary teaching methodology. These articles showed that digital storytelling can be used as a useful tool by educators in improving students’ speaking skills from various levels of education, ranging from primary to tertiary education. Most of the authors of these research papers provided empirical proof that substantiated the advantages of employing digital storytelling in the classroom to help pupils communicate and speak more effectively.

    This systematic review paper examines matters concerning the educational utilisation of digital storytelling to improve students’ speaking skills. In other words, it is a paper that provides an overview of the way that digital storytelling is capable of supporting the process of speaking among students. This will commence with the definition of digital storytelling and how it differs from other kinds of videos found on the Internet. It also discusses how digital storytelling is utilised to support the enhancement of students’ speaking skills [2]. In practice, digital storytelling is defined as the skill of conveying stories using digital media, such as texts, images, recorded audio narrations, music and video. These multimedia elements are combined by using software to tell a story that revolves around a specified kind of theme or even a topic and usually contains the point of use. Researchers claim that the benefits of digital storytelling are significant in facilitating the improvement of speaking skills among students.

    This systematic review of the literature analysed 45 articles on the role of digital storytelling in improving speaking skills, and it was shown that digital storytelling has a variety of attributes, benefits and features that play a vital role in enhancing students’ speaking skills. Numerous researchers were reviewed in this paper, and these researchers have carried out studies using a variety of methodologies in order to highlight the importance of digital storytelling as being a contemporary teaching methodology that plays a vital role in enhancing the speaking skills of students from a variety of levels of education. Students who take part in the development of digital stories can improve their communication skills by learning to express themselves, ask important questions, share their perspectives, and create narratives, as all of this help sharpen students’ speaking skills. Moreover, students are allowed to share their work with their peers, and in that process, they will acquire highly valued experience in criticising their work. This can also encourage better speaking capabilities and promote students to gain a higher level of emotional intelligence, enjoy better collaboration levels and engage more constructively in the social learning process. New technologies are gaining traction in the digital age, and technology resources are rapidly being included in the educational curriculum. Digital storytelling has the ability to help students around the world to understand the importance of story and audio-visual media and at the same time promote language skills and talents. In essence, this systematic review has presented a large number of literature connected to the topic of digital storytelling, and this literature has supported its use in ensuring the greater capability of students in speaking. In other words, based on the perspective of various researchers, it is safe to say that the use of digital storytelling can generate better speaking skills among students of all ages and from all walks of life