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.