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Using a digital story to teach English to pupils in primary schools is not a new enterprise in the field of TESOL. However, this learning platform remains under-practiced in Asian primary schools where English is socio-politically viewed as a foreign language. To fill this gap, we implemented digital storytelling (DST) to engage children in the creation of digital stories and in learning to mean in a multimodal way. This article specifically describes our experience of using DST as pedagogical innovation with pupils of 10-12 years old. In this DST project, pupils jointly created digital stories as multimodal texts. In this respect, they utilized different linguistic resources (e.g., Javanese, Bahasa Indonesia, and English) as well as visual and technological affordances, which assisted them in voicing their real-life experience through digital stories. The practical implication of the project is that primary school teachers of English can experiment with DST to engage pupils in meaningful project-based language learning.

Situated in character-based education, the Indonesian Government mandates all teachers to incorporate moral values into school subjects. Teaching English to young learners (TEYL) is no exception. Little empirical evidence reports how school textbooks (e.g., language textbooks) discursively teach particular values explicitly and implicitly. To validate whether English for young learners (EYL) textbooks teach particular moral values, the present critical discourse study (CDA) reported in this article examines how moral content is discursively infused into EYL textbooks. Framed in Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) theory, it looks specifically at how particular moral values are represented in three nationally-adopted EYL textbooks through lexical choices, the representation of images, and selected texts that the textbook writers use to represent their attitudinal discourse. The findings show that the value of helping others is predominantly represented in the textbooks. The other dominant values encapsulated in the textbooks include politeness and caring. We conclude that the textbook writers place greater emphasis on such values as helping others, being polite, and caring in the textbooks in as much as they may want to teach these values at an early age.

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This article presents two Thai international students’ accounts of their lived experiences during a virtual service learning (community service) program due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured interviews and participants’ reflection data were thematically analyzed through the lens of positive and negative emotions so as to explore participants’ perceptions of virtual service learning. Findings indicate that the pandemic situation was not a barrier to contributing positively to society. One of the positive effects of community service activities is that such activities could build students’ creativity. It was also found that despite bad internet connectivity in their respective areas, the final-year international students were able to adapt to both academic and non-academic environments. This indicates that all international students should maintain their positive feelings when completing their service-learning program.