Breaking the boundaries of texts: Video game and literacy curriculum development for English language learners

Abstract

This study documents the partnership between a public high school English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher
and three doctoral students, all former secondary school teachers, who collaboratively created a literacy video
game for an English Language Arts class for intermediate-level ESL students. Informed by second language
learning researchers and practitioners, including Krashen (1989) and Cary (2000), the video game was positioned
as a means to provide various entry points to curricular texts by virtue of its multimodal features, including
visual, aural, and interactive. The game provided scaffolds for ELLs to negotiate new vocabulary and unfamiliar
language structures as they read about bullying. Observations show that the students’ active engagement in the
video game and related curricular material provided them with a sense of ownership in terms of their learning
(Norton & Toohey, 2012) as they explored authentic literature through a digital world. The hope is for other
educators to apply this game development process and/or adapt the video game to their particular contexts.