11 new literacies and popular culture
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New Literacies & New Literacies & Popular Culture Popular Culture
Practices of University Practices of University StudentsStudents
New Literacies & New Literacies & Popular Culture Popular Culture
Practices of University Practices of University StudentsStudents
Winnie S Y HoWinnie S Y HoPhD CandidatePhD Candidate
Faculty of EducationFaculty of Education
0. Introduction • As up-to-date educators, we should
endeavour to put ourselves into our students’ shoes by exploring the world they are living in.
• Both qualitative & quantitative data sources
• Research methods: Observation & Survey
• With reference to the existing literatures in theories, my study would like to address the following research questions:
(a) What are the popular cultural practices of these learners?
• (b) How are these popular cultural practices mediated?(c) What and how do these learners learn from engaging in these popular cultural practices?
I. Research background
1.1 The community: Hong Kong
1.1.1 One Country, Two Systems -British colony 1997 reunification with China different education, political systems, etc.
1.1.2 Two Written Codes, Three Spoken Languages-Written: Chinese & English -Spoken:
-Cantonese (L1): over 89% of the people -English (L2) : widely used in the Government -Mandarin / Putonghua (L3): Over 1/3 of the 7 million
population (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2002)
1.1.3 Illiteracy -17%: world population in low income countries (UNESCO, 2011)
-5.4%: Hong Kong (UNESCO, 2007)
1.1.4 A Linguistic course’s profile of a private university
• English proficiency level: -fairly good command of spoken English -they have notable grammatical mistakes in writing.
• Personality: -most are confident & enthusiastic-weaker learners are still attentive + eager to participate in the class.
• English learning motivation: -they take this module simply because they are endeavour in enriching their knowledge in vocabulary learning and expanding their vocabulary.
2. Literature Review2.1 Literacy -Not simply as a set of technical skills-learning to read and write as a set of social and cultural
practices that take place within situated communities (Hall,
2003; Street, 1995; Barton, 2007) + embedded in specific contexts/domains
(Fishman, 1972)
2.2 Out-of-School Domains- The contexts or domains are about how one language is
more appropriate than another in some specific contexts ranging from homes, to
libraries, restaurants and various sites which are all out-of-school
2.3 New Literacy Studies (NLS):
• A movement on the reading and writing change from a focus on individuals
interaction and social and cultural practices (Heath, 1983, Barton, 1994; Gee, 1996; Street, 1984 & 1995).
• 3 fields of thought:
1) NLS – literacy takes place everywhere + context shapes literacy development --(Heath, 1983, Barton, 1994; Gee, 1996; and Street, 1984 & 1995)
reading and writing only make sense when studied in the context of social and cultural (+ historical, political, and economic) practices.
2) Multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996)
– the screen has changed the way we learn literacy + teaching overtly & critically to new skills from new technologies is essential
3) Multimodal literacy – an expansion of our understanding of texts – written forms + oral, visual, or gestural modes (Heath and Street ,2008)
a greater social network can be formed (Street, 2004).
•Web 2.0 Internet Applications and Approaches
Figure 1. Populations in the WorldCopied from The future is another country (2010)
3. General Findings on my subjects’ popular cultural practices
13
1
10
3
17
24
1311
0
5
10
15
20
Watching TV
Listening to radio
Listening to songs/music
Playing video games (including online and offline)
Visiting websites, blogs and online discussion forums
Reading leisure books/ comics/ magazines
Watching movies (including VCDs, DVDs, on mobile phone or computer)
Chatting with family and friends face-to-face
Chatting with family and friends on phone, SMS, MSN, etc.
(1) Activities in out-of-classroom settings
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
Less than 10 hours per week
10-30 hours per week
30-50 hours per week
More than 50 hours per week
(2) Using electronic media devices outside school (excluding doing homework)
e.g. TV, radio, mobile phones, computer, portable game players, TV game players, etc.
05
1015202530
Never Severaltimes
Many times Almost everyday
Facebook Blogs
YouTube Online photo albums
Online discussion forums E-mail
MSN/ other messengers SMS
Microblog
(3) New literacies activities (1)
010203040
Never Severaltimes
Many times Almostevery day
Writing blogs
Uploading videos to YouTube
Uploading photos to online photo albums
Posting comments on online discussion forums
Posting microblog entries
(4) New literacies activities (2)
0
10
20
30
40
Writing blogs
Reading English comics/ books/ magazines
Listening to English songs
Visiting websites in English
Playing video games in English
Using English in e-mail/ online messengers/ SMS
(5) Recent practices
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Comics
TV programs
Movies
Songs
Animations
Video games
Websites
(6) Their favourite teaching and learning activities
(7) Do you think using popular culture can
help you to learn English?
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Yes
No
4. Conclusion
• I first critically review the current research on Web 2.0 and new literacies then record the popular cultural practices of my students and reflect on my own practices in the Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 world.
• The world is undergoing rapid changes so having more new developments in information literacy or the emergence of the Web 3.0 world in the near future are foreseeable.
• A need to encourage both our current and younger generation to be well-equipped with the global challenges ahead.