Stage III Thoughts

 You all already know how reluctant I am to give examples, but yeah, ok, I think in this case, since perhaps many of you have never seen a research proposal before, I'll go ahead and provide one for you. This one I actually created! See, it's not that hard. I did it this afternoon.

Writing Stage 3- Planning Inquiry

English 1301 Writing Project

 Stage 3-Planning Inquiry

Discussion of your chosen construct & (mis)conceptions about that construct:

I’ve always considered myself to be a “good reader,” and after reading Flower’s article “Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction of Meaning,” I began to see why. I liked reading because I knew that it meant to immerse yourself into the ideas of someone else, be they fiction or nonfiction. It’s always been pretty easy for me to see reading in this way. Flower thinks that “good readers” are good readers because they have a lot of experience. Maybe they read a lot. Maybe they have interesting and eventful lives which allow them an array of life experiences. I think she’s on to something there, and I’d like to explore one other aspect of rhetorical reading. Can that experience, too, come from playing MMORPGs? 

 Discussion of your research question

My research question, at this point, is “How does playing MMORPGs affect someone’s ability to read rhetorically?”

I’m curious about this question because I think it maybe unlocks a reason as to why I’ve always been able to read rhetorically, even before Flower defined it for me.  And before I go off explaining why, I think it’s important to first define what an MMORPG is. It stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. The most famous example is probably World of Warcraft. In these games, players enter into an unfamiliar, fictional world and have to essentially make inferences as to how it works. Players create a “toon” or an avatar that gets stronger as you progress through the game. They experience and interact with other players, and yes, they have to actually READ a lot in order to figure out what’s going on. A lot of the more advanced tasks (dungeons and raids) require you to interact with a group to finish a task you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do on your own (like a group project), and I can remember more than once I hadn’t done my reading (or understood it well enough), didn’t know what was going on in the dungeon, and well, got scolded for doing it wrong and making my group “wipe.” Wipe is gamer-speak for fail.

I don’t think this is an entirely useless or trivial question; there’s a lot at stake here. Oftentimes, publics tend to think of these games as wastes of time, and surely, sometimes, they really are. However, I do feel as though there is some value to playing them, and I’m thinking that in immersing yourself in another’s world and imagination is a whole lot like rhetorical reading. I’m going to try and build on that connection, if for no other reason, so I’ll have an excuse to keep playing them J

List of keywords

Looking for articles was actually easier than I’d expected. I guess a lot of other people are also curious about the effects of MMORPGs on learning. I just typed in MMORPG into the library database and got a wealth of information. I also was successful in bringing up more general articles on the benefits of playing video games from one of my favorite education blogs, MindShift.

List of relevant sources (written as correct works cited entries) with brief annotations

Chun-Chia Lee, Shang Hwa Hsu, Jen-Wei Chang, (2013) "Factors influencing sociability in 

           educational 

MMORPGs – a fuzzy AHP approach", Internet Research, Vol. 23 Iss: 3, pp.298 – 315

This article discusses how MMORPGs encourage sociability in students, like cooperation, team-based reward, discussion of strategy, reputation, and social navigation. It basically concludes that MMORPGs help students be more open to socialization with one another, because they’ve already experienced this in a virtual world. It’s not exactly rhetorical reading, but I want to focus on “discussion of strategy” as on effect, and tie that in to how I view rhetorical reading, because I see social interaction and being able to discuss a reading as a relevant piece of that puzzle. 

Haas, Christina, and Linda Flower. “Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction of      

             Meaning.”  CCC 

39.2 (1988): 167-83.

Of course – how can I get away without using Flower? This article basically defines rhetorical reading for me as being able to relate and connect a text to experiences and the greater discourse. Good readers make inferences and have a sense of implicit claims rather than just reading a text for what it is. I’m going to use this definition of rhetorical reading as the base of my paper. I’m also pretty much copying Flower’s process, getting students to do think alouds as they read something. As much as I’d love to open up brains, I’ll leave that to the neurologists. 

Suh, S., Kim, S.W. and Kim, N.J. (2010), Effectiveness of MMORPG-based instruction in elementary

English education in Korea. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26: 370–378. 

doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00353.

Ok so this article was actually really neat. I think it’s going to be an important source for me. The gist of this article is that these researchers in Korea used MMORPGs to help elementary aged kids learn English. They found that the kids they used this technique with improved in their reading skills, their writing skills, and their teamwork skills. So this is basically my “booyah” article here; it kind of supports my claim. However, I’m going to have to really analyze how this author defines “good reading” and see if it matches up with Flower’s. Also, this article is all about little kids, and I’m focusing more on college-aged students, so my work is still pretty original. This will be a big help for me, though.

Discussion, if relevant, of any primary research you’d like to do.

For this project, I think primary research is going to be essential, since from what I’ve seen so far, no one has really linked these two ideas just yet. I plan on using a test group comprised of 6 college freshman at UTPA. I’m choosing college freshmen because I want everyone to be relatively similar in reading experience.  Three subjects will be “MMORPG gamers” and 3 will be people who do not play MMORPGs. I will give the test groups a poem to read individually, and I will ask them to reflect on their interpretation of the poem. I decided to go with a poem because I think they require more rhetorical reading than prose, as they tend to be a little abstract.

I will then look at the interpretations and see which subjects used rhetorical strategies and which did not. I will be looking for words like “purpose,” “audience,” and “theme” for evidence of rhetorical thinking in the analyses.

Discussion of potential audiences

My audience is really going to depend on my findings. If I find out that playing these types of games supports rhetorical reading strategies, then I’d like to share these findings with college freshmen who tend to struggle with rhetorical reading, or maybe even those who TEACH rhetorical reading (people like myself!).

If my findings are that there’s no real difference, then I’d like to share that data with other MMORPG gamers to let them know that hey, it doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t really help that much either, so to proceed with moderation. The same goes for if I find that it actually hurts people’s abilities, which is of course a possibility. 

Discussion of potential purposes

Again, this is going to depend on my findings. If I find that there is a positive effect on students’ rhetorical reading abilities, then I’ll use my research to ENCOURAGE struggling students to maybe try this as a strategy to improve their rhetorical reading skills. If my findings are less than encouraging, then I think my purpose would be to warn MMORPG players that their time may be better spent elsewhere.

For me, the real purpose is kind of personal, too. I’m genuinely curious about these findings, and hope to justify one of my seemingly useless hobbies as being at least in part beneficial to me as a reader and thinker. 

Discussion of potential forms/genres

I think it would be interesting and fun to meet MMORPG players where you can find them. I often find myself perusing blogs about these games in order to find strategies, so one way to reach these players would be to create an article/blogpost to put on one of those venues. I would try to avoid using overly technical words, to keep it interesting and maybe even a little entertaining for the readers. Another idea would be like a tutorial youtube style video, as a lot of times I find myself looking up those for instructions on how to do something in the game. I might decide to create one of those for MMORPG players with some interesting title like “How to be a Kingslayer in College”  or “How to Totally PWN College English”

Maybe you could leave ME some feedback? :D I was also thinking about doing a research question that looks into nanowrimo (does anyone else do that? that's another crazy hobby of mine).

A few reminders:

On MONDAY, we won't have formal class. However, you're welcome to bring a rough draft of your Stage III assignment by my office for some feedback. I'm in ARHU 269A and I'll be there from 7:45am to 11:30pm.

Your other option is to do the "book a librarian" if you're having trouble finding sources.

On WEDNESDAY we will have a quiz over Sommers

On FRIDAY your Stage III drafts are due to me. You'll only need to bring one copy.