A Tale ofOne Story in Two Modes: Digital Flash Stories vs. Printed Stories

While the art of storytelling has been around for thousands of years, the advent of Computer-Assisted Language learning (CALL) revived the ancient form of the story reading. This paper examines the effects of exposure to audio-visually enhanced flash stories on story retelling of EFL learners. Thirty two Iranian EFL English learnerswithin an age range of11-13 were randomly assigned to two groups to either read, listen and watch flash stories or just read the printed versions of the same stories. Then, both groups were asked to retell the story. Their oral reproductions were recorded and analyzed in terms of their Mean Length of Utterance (MLU). The findings reveal that exposure to digital storiessignificantly improved oral reproduction ability of the learners in the experimental group and their MLU. The paper finally calls for the integration of flash stories as highly motivating and involving medium of presenting stories in EFL/ESL settings.