English Teaching: Practice and Critique
The uses of literacy in studying computer games: Comparing students' oral and visual representations of games
Caroline Pelletier (Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media, London Knowledge Lab, United Kingdom)
This paper compares the oral and visual
representations which 12 to 13-year-old students produced in studying
computer games as part of an English and Media course. It presents the
arguments for studying multimodal texts as part of a literacy
curriculum and then provides an overview of the games course devised by
teachers and researchers. The analysis of a group interview and a set
of six drawings is designed to highlight the relationship between
knowledge of games gained outside the classroom and knowledge developed
through formal study; the role of gender in students' interpretations
of games; and the literacy practices manifested in different forms of
texts, in particular visual texts. Judith Butler's notion of
performativity is used alongside a multimodal theory of sign-making to
argue that the way students interpret and produce texts is socially
motivated to achieve a certain subjectivity within the context of the
classroom and the peer group. The conclusion examines implications for
the study of games in English and Media classrooms, particularly with
regard to the teaching of genre