Empowering Young English Language Learners through Interactive Whiteboards and Children's Literature in a Primary School Setting -An Action-Research Study

This study focused on the characteristics of an action-research study concerning fostering English language reading and writing intervention programme through the use of storybooks and interactive whiteboards in a primary state school, located in northeast Portugal (mid-socio-economic status setting), where four groups of children (N= 92) participated in the academic year 2021-2022, after the National strategy for introducing foreign languages in primary schools was launched.Despite the 'nnovations' the Portuguese official curriculum suggests, teaching of English as a foreign language in Portugal seems to remain attached to merely teaching a set of isolated words throughout the years. Hence, in this paper it is argued that storybooks aided by Interactive Whiteboards' (IWBs) videos of the stories display, subtitled in English have the clear potential to address the current lack of interactive communication in EFL classes. These classroom-based storybook reading sessions were carried out over an academic year. This targeted, controlled experiment examined the effects of a print referencing environment. The sample comprised 85 primary school children attending, Year 2 and (7 years old), (n=50) and Year 3 (8 years old), (n= 35), located in a city centre, Northeast Portugal. The participant, EFL Teacher, following a semi-bilingual syllabus, and the other teachers in 14 other classrooms did not use a print referencing style during 120 large-group storybook reading sessions during a 30-week period. The researcher's Field Notes evidenced that the teachers in the comparison classrooms neither read storybooks at all nor used the same interactive, narrative, fluent style of reading, but used instead their own set of isolated words to teach English, without a clear focus on reading.However, in order to effectively incorporate IWBs in EFL classes, school administrators should consider providing constant technical assistance for teachers in the event of difficulties, as well as teaching them on how to use new software that are a part of dealing with IWBs.