USING STORYBOARDS TO BRIDGE READING AND WRITING: AN ACTION RESEARCH STUDY OF LEARNER AUTONOMY AND STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION

This study aims to investigate how students transfer the vocabulary knowledge acquired through various vocabulary learning strategies in a reading course into newly constructed texts using a storyboard-based digital tool. The study was conducted with 45 students enrolled in the 12-week “Reading Skills I” course within the German Language Teaching program. Adopting an action research design, the study further examines the development of learner autonomy through stages such as planning, drafting, revising, editing, sharing, and evaluation, which are closely associated with process-oriented writing pedagogy and self-regulated learning approaches. Data were collected through semi-structured pre- and post-interviews, researcher observation notes, student-generated products, and video recordings. The data were analyzed holistically using qualitative content analysis. During the implementation process, students were first required to produce original texts using target vocabulary learned in the course. Subsequently, these texts were transformed into storyboard-based visual narratives and presented to a different group outside their own classroom, enabling an authentic reading comprehension experience. This process not only facilitated the integration of reading and writing skills but also significantly contributed to the development of students’ autonomous learning practices by promoting independent learning and increasing their awareness of their own learning processes. Furthermore, students expressed predominantly positive attitudes toward this application and highlighted the benefits it provided in terms of language development, motivation, and perceived utility. The findings suggest that these applications can serve as a student-centered pedagogical approach. Furthermore, the findings suggest that, despite the natural emphasis on independent learning, learner autonomy can also be effectively developed through collaboration with peers. In light of these findings, future research using different methods to examine the causal effects of the application on language development is recommended.