Digital Storytelling as a Tool for Developing German Oral Narrative Competence: An Empirical Study at Obafemi Awolowo University

This study empirically investigates the effectiveness of digital storytelling as a pedagogical tool for developing oral narrative competence in German among Masters students at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, South West Nigeria. Oral narrative competence, encompassing the ability to structure, sequence, and linguistically realise spoken stories in German, is a sophisticated communicative skill that is inadequately addressed by conventional language instruction. Digital storytelling, which involves creating narrated multimedia presentations, has been explored in other language contexts as a motivating and cognitively engaging approach to oral skill development. The study employs a quasi-experimental design, with an experimental group of 45 Masters students engaging in a structured digital storytelling project over eight weeks, and a matched control group of 45 students receiving conventional oral production practice. Pre- and post-assessments are conducted using an oral narrative scoring rubric measuring coherence, lexical richness, grammatical accuracy, and fluency. Analysis of covariance controls for baseline proficiency differences. Findings indicate that the digital storytelling group demonstrates significantly greater gains in narrative coherence and lexical richness, while grammatical accuracy gains are comparable across groups. The study contributes to the literature on technology-enhanced language learning and provides a replicable instructional model for German oral skill development. Keywords: digital storytelling, German oral narrative, Masters students, Obafemi Awolowo University, technology-enhanced language learning.