Reading in the Context of Online Games

Abstract

Research suggests that text is an important component of videogame culture (Gee, 2003; Leander, & Lovvorn, 2006; Steinkuehler, 2007), but we have few empirical assessments of what kinds of texts are involved or youth's reading performance on them. This paper presents a series of four studies conducted to examine: What texts are a regular part of videogame play? What is their nature, function, and quality? And what is the nature of adolescent reading performance within such contexts? Our results show that informational texts, comprised of 20% academic language and with an 11.8 average reading level, are the most prevalent text type used for gameplay. Reading performance on such texts is no different than on school-related texts when topic and difficulty were controlled. However, when struggling readers when allowed to choose the topic, they performed at "independent" level (94-97% accuracy) even on texts that were 7-8 grade levels above their head.