ADVENTURES IN FANFICTION FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING & LEARNING
Shannon Sauro
University of Maryland, Baltimore County (USA)
@shansauro l ssauro.info l ssauro@umbc.edu
THE ADVENTURE BEGINS: THE DIGITAL WILDS
“digital spaces, communities, and networks [where language learning occurs] that are independent of formal instructional contexts”
(Sauro & Zourou, 2019, p. 1)
ONLINE FANDOM
“the local and international networks of fans that develop around a particular program, text or other media product”
(Sauro, 2014, p. 239)
FAN
“A fan is a person with a relatively deep positive emotional conviction about someone or something famous...”
(Duffet, 2013, p. 18)
FANFICTION
"writing that continues, interrupts, reimagines, or just riffs on stories and characters other people have already written about."
(Jamison, 2013 p. 17)
Art: Foxestacado
THE QUEST
How can we develop and assess fanfiction activities that facilitate language learning but also fit within formal educational contexts.
THE FIRST ADVENTURE: MALMÖ, SWEDEN
A required university English teacher education course (B2-C1) on teaching literature and creative writing for lower secondary (ages 13-16) and upper secondary school (ages 16-19) at Malmö University in Sweden.
THE FANFICTION PROJECT
A six-year project that explored collaborative fanfiction writing in a university English as a foreign language class:
(Sauro & Thorne, 2020)
THE INSTRUCTORS
Björn Sundmark - professor of English literature, editor of the journal Barnboken, fan of all things Lord of the Rings, owner of a dog named Gimli
Shannon Sauro - associate professor of educational linguistics, fan of Sherlock and Harry Potter among other things, reader of fanfiction, fan artist and fan podcaster
BUT WERE THE STUDENTS FANS?
“I identify as a fan, like, since the beginning of time.”
(Sauro & Sundmark, 2019, p. 44)
“To be frank, this was a universe I cared absolutely nothing about, so I didn’t have any investment from the start.”
(Student Reflection, Cohort 2015)�
COMPONENTS OF THE FANFICTION PROJECT
1000 words from each student.
Stories ranged from 3000-16,000 words
MOVING BEYOND COMMON EVERYDAY VOCABULARY
“this writing activity has influenced my language skills…. During this project I have been able to expand my repertoar [sic] of English words which are not so commonly used in everyday English anymore.”
(Sauro & Sundmark, 2016, p. 420)
ATTENTION TO LANGUAGE FORM
…instead of saying “he said”, we and Doyle instead used “said he”. Second, we and Doyle often, from Watson’s perspective, referred to Sherlock Holmes as “my colleague”, and from Sherlock’s perspective referring to Watson as “my friend”. Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes often said “pray” instead of “please”, and “I fancy” instead of “I believe”, which we also used in our fanfiction.
(Student 16, Cohort 2015)
ADAPTING LANGUAGE TO FIT THE TIME
The first thing that came to mind for me when considering Arthur Conan Doyle’s language and how to emulate it was the time it was written in. ….The problem when writing the fan-fiction was knowing which words were and which were not used in Arthur Conan Doyle’s time. Thankfully, we have the internet now, and whenever my group was in doubt we could find the answer quite easily.
(Student Reflection, Cohort 2015)
Art: Foxestacado
BUILDING ON PRIOR TRAINING ON ACADEMIC WRITING
“This project made me pay attention to grammatical aspects in the Harry Potter books. For example, Rowling doesn’t use a lot of transitional words, which we just used a lot in academic writing, but rather she uses colons. I have never used colons before in my writing so that was fun to learn.”
(Sauro & Thorne, 2020, p. 236)
Art: Foxestacado
REFLECTING ON OWN LANGUAGE USE
Well, I realized that when I was writing the “conversation bits” of the story I kept thinking to myself “can you say that?” or “do people really talk like this?” which really made me reflect upon my own ways of speaking and how I present myself in different types of conversations.
(Student Reflection, Cohort 2015)
Art: Foxestacado
SHERLOCK AND SCOOBY DOO FUSION
My interest in Doyle and the Sherlock Holmes world is still at an intermediate level…. On the other hand, my knowledge of the Scooby Doo universe is far greater and I could enter that verse much easier than the universe of Sherlock Holmes.
(Student Reflection, Cohort 2015)
THE CONTINUING CHALLENGE
I felt it unfair to work with The Hobbit on such a project since a big part was to connect with a character from the book and write from that perspective. To choose a book with absolutely no women at all made me not wanting to take neither Tolkien nor this assignment to heart.
(Student Reflection, Cohort 2014)
A NEW QUEST
What happens when fanfiction tasks are brought into the secondary school English language classroom?
THE SECOND ADVENTURE: AALST, BELGIUM
THE TASK
This multiweek assignment (approx. 25 classroom hours) was based upon Assassins Creed, an action-adventure video game with a narrative element, each version of which features a different time period and region where the story takes place.
Extract from ‘Not about pyramids’ incorporating the setting of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag
Extract from ‘In Shallow Waters’ incorporating the setting of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag
DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING
“It improved our writing skills because first we never wrote such an extensive text and now, we did, and we did it descriptive. So, it improved our writing skills.”
(Interview 1, Participant 5)
BUILDING BEAUTIFUL SENTENCES THAT YOU WANT TO READ
“I think that with the English we had to pay attention to the structures of the sentences because it was very tempting to start every sentences with “he…”, “he did this…”, “he did that…”, and then continue like that or to just make very short sentences instead of kind of trying to build a decent, beautiful sentence that you would actually read in a book.”
(Cornillie et al., 2021, p. 33)
LESSONS LEARNED
FANTALES:RESOURCES FOR TEACHING WITH FANFICTION
(Freely available to download at https://www.fantales.eu/materials/ )
Fan Fiction
Multilingual storytelling
Interactive Fiction
Tele-
collaboration
FURTHER ADVENTURES IN TEACHING WITH FANFICTION
Sauro, S., & Thorne, S.L. (2020). Pedagogically mediating engagement in the wild: Trajectories of fandom-based curricular innovation. In V. Werner & F. Tegge (Eds.), Pop culture in language education (pp.228-241). Taylor & Francis.
FANART ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Fox Estacado of The Art of Fox Estacado: Fine Fan Art and Geekery (artbyfox.storenvy.com). All rights reserved and used in this presentation with permission.
REFERENCES
Cornille, F., Buendgens-Kosten, J., Sauro, S., & Van der Veken, J. (2021). “There’s always an option“: Collaborative writing of multilingual interactive fanfiction in a foreign language class. CALICO Journal, 38(1), 17-42.
Duffett, M. (2013). Understanding fandom: An introduction to the study of media fan culture. New York/London: Bloomsbury.
Jamison, A. (2013). ‘Why Fic?’ in A. Jamison (ed.). Fic: Why fanfiction is taking over the world. Dallas, TX: Smart Pop Books.
Sauro, S. (2014). Lessons from the fandom: Task models for technology-enhanced language learning. In M. González-Lloret & L. Ortega (Eds). Technology-mediated TBLT: Researching technology and tasks, (pp. 239-262). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Sauro, S., & Sundmark, B. (2019). Critically examining the use of blog-based fan fiction in the advanced language classroom. ReCALL. 31(1): 40-55, doi:10.1017/S0958344018000071
Sauro, S., & Sundmark, B. (2016). Report from Middle Earth: Fan fiction tasks in the EFL classroom. ELT Journal, 70(4), 414-423 . doi: 10.1093/elt/ ccv075
Sauro, S., & Thorne, S.L. (2020). Pedagogically mediating engagement in the wild: Trajectories of fandom-based curricular innovation. In V. Werner & F. Tegge (Eds.), Pop culture in language education (pp.228-241). Taylor & Francis.
Sauro, S., & Zourou, K. (2019). What are the digital wilds? Language Learning & Technology, 23(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10125/44666
@shansauro l ssauro.info l ssauro@umbc.edu