Oral communicative competence of early childhood education students embodied in their oral narrations elaborated with an app

Abstract

Digital storytelling apps can be suitable for stimulating and assessing oral communicative competence, which consists of the linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences. Therefore, after evaluating the immersive potential of the app Imagistory and its ability to foster oral production in early childhood education, this empirical research—non experimental, descriptive and observational—focuses on: 1) assessing the oral communicative competence of early childhood education students (N=93), through the recording of their oral speech via this app, and 2) identifying the relationship between the competence level showed and the engagement generated by the narrative task with the app. The methodology is mixed: qualitative, attached to the hermeneutic paradigm—as the researchers analyses the content of the stories created considering the indicators related to the oral communicative competence—, and, quantitative, linked to the statistical treatment of data collected with an instrument designed and validated (α=0.805). The results highlight a medium-high competence level of the students, regardless of their age and genre. Good pronunciation is detected as well as a correct use of morphological elements, verbal tenses, and vocabulary in their oral productions. This competence correlates significantly with the engagement generated by the app. The sequence of illustrations included has increased their interest, curiosity, and immersion in the story, thus contributing to the creation of a coherent and cohesive oral story. In conclusion, these tools allow assessing the oral speech in early childhood, developing the initial diagnosis of this competence, detecting their limitations, and verifying their progress.