Whew, it’s been a while! The last few months of school were really busy – everything was at 100%, I’d say. But now that it’s summer, I am working full time on my project, so i will be able to post frequent updates again! Huzzah!

I have finished the rest of the Remapping book and completed all the relevant chapters of another – not bad progress for my pedagogical research part! Those were a couple of the largest readings as well.

Without further ado, here are the rest of my thoughts and notes on Remapping:

Chapter 3

This chapter dealt primarily with teaching youths, but had a couple good points to make about the readability of a text:

• they are consistent in their point of view (ie not switching characters or person all the time)
• they are coherent stories
• images can make a text more readable
• reader interest (if a reader is more interested in a work, they’re more likely to understand it)
• familiarity with words (obviously they’re going to understand more if they’re familiar with all the vocabulary)
• redundancy can help with comprehension
• concrete situations are more comprehensible than abstract ones

Chapter 5 (chapter 4 was not relevant to my research)

This chapter expanded on the holistic theme by introducing the concept of the Précis, which is a template for a series of pedagogical tasks that integrate comprehension and production practice. In short, it is a longer series of exercises that has elements that foster holistic learning. It aims to include cultural literacy goals and emphasizes identifying genres and stereotypes before attempting cultural analysis. This was an interesting note for me because I do hope to sneak in some cultural knowledge in my interactive story games – or at least comprehensive knowledge of historic tales. Other than this, the précis doesn’t seem to be super applicable, given that it has to do more with an entire teaching curriculum than a single game (my starting point). I have, however, have started wondering whether or not all of my games should be aimed towards a single comprehensive curriculum-like goal, or if I should just make each game have a smaller goal and let users practice what they want to specifically.

A nice point this chapter brought up is the use of genres. A genre is defined by the authors as an oral or written rhetorical practice that structures culturally-embedded communicative situations in a highly predictable fashion, thereby creating horizons of expectations for its community of users. In other words, some predictable that can be grouped by category. Genres, being easily recognizable and predictable, make comprehension of a story a lot easier for second language users. This puts more points in favor for gamifying fairy tales, as they are one of the most predicable types of stories out there. It also leads to more careful analysis – reading beyond the stereotypical structure. Formulaic stories are also more likely to be straightforward, with no abstract concepts or hidden intents, making it easy for readers to grasp the plot in its entirety as well as characters’ motivations.

Some side thoughts that occurred to me while reading this chapter:

• The texts I will be using for my games had a different audience than what I’m aiming for – how (besides the format of experiencing the story) will I make the game more accessible to my audience? i.e. how much of the original story is going to be exact versus modernized or localized, or even just simplified?
• Things to keep in mind (more of a note to myself): formal vs. informal language, private/public discourse, sender/receiver language, audience’s cultural literacy

Chapter 6

Notes from this chapter:

• many entering college will not have close reading skills or knowledge about it
• cultural literacy is something I want to subtly add in (“stealth learning,” they call it) – this can come from localized dialogue, interest points, accurate scenery, etc.

Chapter 7

Am I “teaching literature” this way, or am I just giving a different form to literary works? My main goal is simply language retention, anything learned after that is a bonus, but realistically my users should have a good grasp of the plot of these tales after playing the game…

Some more questions to keep in mind:

• What knowledge (cultural or literary) will people have when they first visit the site?
• Need a more specific definition of “high intermediate to advanced” language user.

When my French V class was preparing for the AP exam, we listened to some other students’ oral portions of the exam. When we heard the one that got a score of 5, we were stunned. They knew so much more vocab than we did! Our teacher told us in full confidence that we were at the same level as that person, they were just taught a different set of vocabulary, and we likely knew plenty of words and structures they did not. That was a mind-boggling moment for me. What this is leading up to is that two people can be at the same language level, but one person may perfectly understand the narrative of my game, and another not simply because of what they were taught.

Outside of the end of that book, I have also started reading fairy tales, medieval romances, etc. looking for a starting point for my first game. And I have decided to start with Yvain! He’s a really cool knight with a lion. Everyone knows Lancelot, but honestly, Yvain is cooler. His story also will work really well for a more open-world feeling than some of the other stores I’ve looked at.

So far I’ve been having a blast reading all the fairy tales – especially the Quebecois ones, they don’t mess around! A lot of good vocabulary in these stories. The only problem is that they are SO directed and linear that it would be difficult to make a real “game” with meaningful choices out of them. I have played games where it seems like you have a choice, but the outcome doesn’t change, and they’re really easy to see through and get abandoned quickly.

I’ll make a separate reflection post for the next book I’ve finished, so that will be up soon!