The effect of digital storytelling on students’ language skills performance: a meta-analytic study

As digital storytelling fosters the development of language skills in students, it is becoming increasingly prevalent in language education. However, a comprehensive meta-analytic review is lacking in literature on the impact of digital storytelling on students’ language skills in both native language and foreign language instruction. To address this issue, this meta-analytic study was conducted to examine the overall effect of digital storytelling on students’ language skills performance, in addition to a set of moderating variables. Twenty-nine quasi-experimental studies with thirty-five effect sizes that compared traditional and digital storytelling applications in language instruction for grades 1–12 were included in our analysis. The meta-analysis revealed an overall statistically significant effect of digital storytelling (g = 0.979) on students’ language skills improvement, indicating a large effect size. The effect sizes were also significantly moderated by experiment duration and the country where the studies were conducted. There was no indication of publication bias in the set of data. We discussed the use of the digital storytelling approach in language teaching settings and made recommendations for further research.