Interactive Digital Narratives as Tools for Language Acquisition: Bridging Storytelling and Pedagogy in the 21st-century classroom

This paper investigates the transformative impact of digitalization on narrative forms, with particular focus on emerging storytelling practices that transcend traditional literary frameworks. Situating the discussion within the interdisciplinary domain of digital humanities, this study examines how digital platforms and social media have given rise to hybrid narrative modes, including transmedia storytelling, Twitterature, Instapoetry, and interactive web novels. These formats embody multimodal, participatory, and temporally fluid approaches to narrative construction and reception. Drawing on examples from platforms such as Wattpad, Reddit, Medium, and Wonderscope, this research analyses how storytelling in the digital era increasingly fosters real-time reader interaction and community engagement. In doing so, it maps the narrative preferences and cognitive orientations of Generation Alpha, whose literary consumption is shaped by immediacy, interactivity, and multimedia aesthetics. The paper argues that these digital narratives do not merely extend the boundaries of storytelling but represent a paradigmatic shift in narrative ontology, reader-author dynamics, and cultural production, and employs comparative textual and platform-based analysis. By exploring the implications of this shift for literary studies and narrative theory, the study contributes to emerging discourse on born-digital literature and the role of technology in shaping narrative agency, voice, and accessibility. The study employed the theoretical frameworks of M.L. Ryan and N. Hayles, contributing to the growing discourse on digital-born literature and platform-based studies, while also challenging how digital storytelling can institutionalize literary canons. It offers a democratized space for underrepresented voices.