Fan Fiction and Informal Language Learning (original) (raw)

Fan Fiction and Critical Media Literacy

2009

This article explores English-language-learning (ELL) youths’ engagement with popular media through composing and publicly posting stories in an online fan fiction writing space. Fan fiction is a genre that lends itself to critical engagement with media texts as fans repurpose popular media to design their own narratives. Analyses describe how three ELL youth employ creative agency as they fashion fan fiction stories that are relevant to their own lives. Findings reveal that contemporary participatory media, such as fan fiction writing, involve sophisticated forms of literacy that can serve as useful resources for promoting in-class learning. However, the study also suggests that students would benefit from expert guidance in the areas of critical consumption and production of media and digital texts. (

Online Fan Fiction and Critical Media Literacy

This article explores English-language-learning (ELL) youths' engagement with popular media through composing and publicly posting stories in an online fan fiction writing space. Fan fiction is a genre that lends itself to critical engagement with media texts as fans repurpose popular media to design their own narratives. Analyses describe how three ELL youth employ creative agency as they fashion fan fiction stories that are relevant to their own lives. Findings reveal that contemporary participatory media, such as fan fiction writing, involve sophisticated forms of literacy that can serve as useful resources for promoting in-class learning. However, the study also suggests that students would benefit from expert guidance in the areas of critical consumption and production of media and digital texts. (Keywords: critical media literacy, 21 st -century skills, popular culture)

Fan Culture as an Informal Learning Environment :Presentation of a NGL project

Ngl 2012 Next Generation Learning Conference February 21 23 2012 Falun Sweden Conference Proceedings, 2012

Fan culture is a subculture that has developed explosively on the internet over the last decades. Fans are creating their own films, translations, fiction, fan art, blogs, role play and also various forms that are all based on familiar popular culture creations like TV-series, bestsellers, anime, manga stories and games. In our project, we analyze two of these subculture genres, fan fiction and scanlation. This is something to take into pedagogical consideration when we develop web-based courses. Fan fiction and fan culture make it possible to have an intensive transcultural dialogue between participators throughout the world and is of great interest when studying the interaction between formal and informal learning that puts the student in focus.

Fanfiction Writing and the Construction of Space

E-learning, 2007

In this article, a spatial lens is used to look at a popular online culture-based writing website as a means of understanding how fan authors' literacy practices and the design features of the site interact to shape a writing space that engenders affiliation with and facilitates access to literacy and language learning. Discussion also focuses on how the site, conceptualized as an affinity space, provides English-language-learning youth with multiple means of displaying expertise in and affiliating around popular culture, as well as of positioning themselves as capable and accomplished users of multiple social languages.

Juvenile Literary Hypertextual Fanfiction: evolution, analysis and educational possibilities

2019

In this work we analyse the evolution of fanfictions related to four of the most popular current fandom series: Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games and Divergent. This is a descriptive investigation wherein the temporal evolution of fanfic production is studied. The research focuses mainly on the relationship between the periods of greatest creative fanfiction activity and the publishing of the different books of the respective series, their transmedia expansion and film adaptations, among others. The study has allowed us to observe that these fan communities are generally ephemeral, although strongly united by ties of affinity, as well as being creative and active. The results obtained suggest that these vernacular literary practices are the source not only of motivation, but also of a formative process of reading and writing that can be planned and developed in formal learning contexts. La escritura hipertextual de los fans (o seguidores) de sagas literarias juveniles: evolución, análisis y posibilidades formativas RESUMEN: En este trabajo se ha analizado la evolución temporal de la producción de fanfictions relacionados con cuatro de las sagas de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil con mayor fandom en la actualidad: Harry Potter, Crepúsculo, Los Juegos del Hambre y Divergente. La investigación se centra, principalmente, en conocer la relación entre los períodos de mayor actividad de creación de fanficiton y la publicación de los diferentes libros o series, su expansión transmediática y adaptaciones cinematográficas, entre otros. El estudio nos ha permitido observar que estas comunidades de fans son generalmente efímeras, aunque fuertemente unidas por lazos de afinidad, además de creativas y activas. Los resultados obtenidos sugieren que estas prácticas literarias vernáculas son la fuente no solo de la motivación, sino también de un proceso formativo de lectura y escritura que puede planificarse y desarrollarse en contextos de aprendizaje formales.

Fanfiction as an Academic Tool for Advanced Language Fluency: A Study

Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education, 2021

In this globalized world, a thorough grasp of the English language has mushroomed as an inexorable necessity than an obligation. Traditional language learning is often turning out to be an involuntary process, alienating learners and thereby posing bigger challenges to second language teaching. Given the ongoing diversified technological revolution, an informal user-friendly ambience was created, making learning an uncomplicated and stress-free exercise. Digital platforms aid in several ways for learning languages - such as online language courses and special purpose mobile applications. Exposure to the language is vital in the learning process and social media can be of great help here. There is no better choice as a practice ground than social media and its associated forms. Fanfiction forums are the most popular reading and writing communities on the Internet. This paper attempts to throw light on how fanfiction can be useful in the task-based language teaching method for attainment of advanced fluency in reading and writing skills. A looming literary sensation and a source of entertainment, fanfictions of prominent literary works and visual arts are widely read and accepted by masses. This fictional writing can be incorporated into a higher-level language classroom as a learning tool, under the guidance of teachers who are accustomed to this form of writings and are digitally literate. A sample survey was conducted among fan fiction groups to highlight and justify the efficacy of fanfiction in promoting English language learning.

Fan translation of games, anime and fanfiction

Language Learning and Technology, 2019

Fan practices involving translation open up opportunities to explore language learning practices within the fandom (Sauro, 2017). We examine how three fans capitalize on fan translation and language learning. We consider the cases of Selo (an English–Spanish translator of games), Nino (a Japanese–Catalan fansubber of anime, and Alro (an English–Spanish translator of fanfics). A corpus was built consisting of 297 minutes of interviews, 186 screenshots of language learning events from online sites, and 213 minutes of screencast videos of online activity. Drawing upon the conceptual framework of new literacy studies (Barton, 2007), we set four themes to present fans’ literacy practices and language learning: (a) fan translation, (b) understanding the original text, (c) writing and preparing the translation, and (d) tools, resources, and collaborative online practices. Results indicated that the three informants encountered an open space for agency, creativity, and identity building and reinforcement through fan translation. Their translations provided content and represented the generators of the semiotic fabric in their fandoms (Gee, 2005). As fan translators, they learned language in multiple ways, such as peer-to-peer feedback, autodidactism, and creative uses of Google Translate. Future research may attempt to transfer knowledge from digital wilds into formal education.

The 'Fanfic Lens': Fan Writing's Impact on Media Consumption

Participations. Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 2023

Scholarship frames fanfiction authors as inhabiting a complex double role as 'prosumers', both consuming commercial entertainment products and critically reinterpreting them in their own creative output. What has been overlooked are the ways in which fanfiction changes consumer behaviour beyond the moment and the spaces of fan engagement. I argue that even when approaching a completely new piece of entertainment media, fanfiction authors exhibit specific patterns of consumption shaped by their experience of agency, and habitual resistance against source texts, in fan writing. I propose that by adopting an authorial role, fan writers develop a lasting fandom-sensitive attitude I term the 'Fanfic Lens', which can be understood as a specific set of literacy skills gained from socialisation into fan communities. Using empirical participant data generated through an online survey and semi-structured interviews with young adult fanfiction authors, I identify four ways in which fanfiction may shape its authors' experience of media consumption. Building on these, I investigate how the 'prosumer' role of fanfiction authors is actualised in practice, calling for increased attention to its complexity and variability.