Producing Digital Storytelling to Improve Foreign Language Learning: a Multimodal and Intersemiotic Approach Anabela Jesus University of Minho Portugal jesus.anabela@gmail.com Ana Amelia A. Carvalho University of Minho Portugal aac@ie.uminho.pt Abstract: This paper reports the findings of a case study conducted on a 6 th level classroom in a formal learning setting during the school year 2009/2010. The study aimed to contribute to a deeper understanding of the real potential of digital storytelling as a learning multimodal methodology. Several research instruments were developed for data gathering: two questionnaires; a focus group interview; a grid to evaluate the written productions; a grid to evaluate the digital stories and a diary to write the observations made in the classroom. The results evidenced that the building of digital stories created a student-centred learning environment that is better suited to the development of the students’ writing skills than the regular learning environment. The learning experience has also strengthened students’ engagement and satisfaction in the learning process. Introduction Siemens & Tittenberger (2009) hold that in the current educational environment we are in the midst of a conceptual and technological transformative change and Lankshear & Knobel (2008) point out that the present historical-cultural development of literacy brings great challenges which are not being properly addressed by school. New information and communication technologies are changing the way people communicate (Coiro et al., 2008). They change the available means for making meaning (Kress, 2003), they change the ways we write and interact, and they also change who we interact with (Coiro et al., 2008). As a result of a communicative changing world (Kress, 2003), especially regarding the increasing predominance of image and of digital communicational environments, the educational system should prepare students to be multimodal communicators. The literacy pedagogy should account for the increasing variety of text forms associated to multimedia technologies and for the diversification of media channels of communication (Jenkins et al., 2009). In foreign language learning, traditional theories of learning might be regarded as monomodal (Stein, 2008). In this sense language is the only form of representation and communication aimed at in the learning process. Digital storytelling, considered as the use of “personal digital technology to combine a number of media into a coherent narrative” (Ohler, 2008, p.1) and as “The art and craft of using new media technologies to create and relate a story” (Blomgren, 2009, p.1), might be located within a paradigmatic shift in the learning of a second language. This paradigmatic shift is characterised by a multimodal approach to the forms of representation and communication available to students to produce meaning. A multimodal theory of communication maintains that meaning is achieved through diverse modes and media which integrate a communicational whole (Kress & Leeuwen, 2001; Jewitt, 2006; Hull & Nelson, 2005; Nelson, 2006). Communication in the classroom goes beyond the linguistic mode. In a multimodal - 3569 -