Abstract:

One of the 7 key competences of the Spanish Primary Education curriculum is digital competence (DC). DC is essential for the well-being of European societies, economic growth and innovation in the 21st century. In Primary schools, it is crucial to stimulate children's curiosity and DC, so that they can gradually acquire the necessary skills to use information and communication technologies (ICTs), but always in a responsible, critical and safe manner. With these skills, students will be able to search for information and process, carry out collaborative work and, above all, learn to learn in order to adapt to the challenges that they will face in the future.

Folk tales encompass a valuable piece of culture in written form. In the EFL classroom, they can be used as a dual focused approach, for both entertaining and developing linguistic skills but also for increasing the awareness of cultural elements (Lwin, 2015). In this vein, storytelling and short readings have been commonly implemented in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. Additionally, the digitalization of written material has enabled educators to implement new approaches by utilizing ICTs. Researchers argue that technology can be useful to personalize and augment students’ learning and reading experience, by including for example audio versions of the text, enabling recordings, supporting visual aids and increasing motivation.

In this paper, a didactic proposal to include folk tales in the EFL classroom implementing the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach and ICTs is presented. The main aim is to implement a set of specifically chosen tales in English to promote language acquisition and foster learning of the Finnish culture and traditions for Spanish Primary students. The selected tales are found in the book Where is Turnip Troll and Other Stories From Lapland (Hurd, 2013). In this sense, the proposal aims at helping build a multicultural Europe.

For this purpose, the CLIL approach appears as an excellent candidate thanks to its four pillars (Communication, Content, Cognition and Culture). Additionally, as part of a cross-curricular proposal, activities and content from the areas of Natural and Social Sciences and Art and Crafts are included. The didactic objectives, summaries of the readings, descriptions of the workshops, evaluation and possible implications are also outlined.

Keywords:

EFL, folktales, CLIL, digital competencies, didactic proposal, Primary Education.