View Content #28079

Stephanie Knight, CASLS Assistant Director

            Information, especially given the realities of online discourse spaces, is both readily accessible and dynamic. This dynamism begets an inherent heterogeneity that can be challenging for language teachers wishing to prepare learners to communicate in real-world contexts. Not only are learners required to develop discourse competence related to a variety of text types ranging in formality (e.g., tweets, social media profiles, and news articles), but they must also be aware of the heterogeneity of the sources (e.g., professional journalists, guerilla journalists, and even bots) that create and disseminate information. Especially given that learners can also disseminate information, they are implicated in the evaluation of the credibility of said sources.

            Digital games are one tool that teachers can employ in the development of critical media literacy skills, particularly given the existence of emergent discourse (i.e. interactions that occur both through the game and around the game) and attendant discourse (i.e. interactions that occur both around and about the game). Within said discourse spaces, participants may discuss gameplay strategies, or they may engage in what Thorne et. al (2009) calls hybridizing (the recombination and alteration of existing game materials via such avenues as fan fiction and machinima). These engagements are beneficial to learners because they provide shared contexts and necessary scaffolding to empower learners to create more advanced work than they would otherwise be capable of completing (Sykes & Reinhardt, 2013). Simply put, “… far from distracting players from the “real world,” gameplay and its emergent and attendant discourses place learners in a complex yet scaffolded collection of worlds that require diverse interactions to attain learner-selected goals” (Knight, Marean, & Sykes,2020, p.106).

            This week’s Activity of the Week provides one example of a game that is not only designed to promote critical thinking related to media literacy, but also affords the opportunity for learners to engage in emergent and attendant discourse spaces via classroom interactions. The game, Plague Inc. (available on Steam, Google Play, and in the App Store), is available in a variety of languages and is well-suited to secondary learners. Teachers are encouraged to evaluate the game and adapt the activity to their own specific contexts.

References

Knight, S.W.P., Marean, L., & Sykes, J. M. (2020). Gaming and informal language learning. In M. Dressman & R.W.                Sadler (Eds.), The handbook of informal language earning (101-115). West Sussex: Wiley.

Sykes, J. & Reinhardt, J. (2013). Language at play: Digital games in second and foreign language teaching                             and learning. New York: Pearson-Prentice Hall.

Thorne, S. L., Black, R. W., & Sykes, J. (2009). Second language use, socialization, and learning in Internet                           communities and online games. Modern Language Journal, 93, 802–821.