In this study, the ESL classroom is considered as a language-learning community where students develop their intercultural skills to become eventual peacebuilders through the medium of storytelling. To accomplish this goal, in the ESL classroom characterized by a literature and the arts-based model, the teacher as facilitator constructs the learning environment so as to build confidence in students as they are empowered to become autonomous learners.

This model seeks to demonstrate how various modes of storytelling such as folklore and fairytales, scripting and acting, and the analysis of art in the college-level ESL classroom help to preserve and promote the learner's culturally informed sense of selfhood.

Among the principal topics researched in this study are the following: the debate regarding the incorporation of culture in language learning, the role of culture in classroom communication, the integration of the five core components of language learning, known as the 5 Cs, as recommended by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), the importance of a student-centered classroom, learner autonomy, and various methods and approaches to language learning and teaching. Focus is placed on engaging a literature and the arts-based curriculum. Included are eleven lessons based on four objectives: Overcoming Stage Fright, Navigating Cultural Misunderstandings, Cultivating Self and Cultural Expression, and Building Relationships.

Finally, this study proposes that in effective language learning, the classroom becomes an empowering, learner-centered community, a social laboratory, in which the teacher as facilitator, organizes interactive, intercultural, communication among the students through a variety of storytelling genres to build confidence and eventually autonomy in the learners and to prepare them to become peacebuilders beyond the classroom in their communities and in their international engagements.