DIGITAL LITERACY IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE THROUGH TEXT MINING AND FANFICTION WRITING

Abstract

This study investigates how digital literacy in a foreign language (FL) may be supported by the use of a digital resource that can aid the processes of reading and writing. Thus, this research is based on studies by Feldman and Sanger (2006) about text mining, and on research by Black (2007; 2009) about the incorporation of a text genre  typical  from the Internet, the fanfiction (text based on existing media), in language learning. Through the use of the text mining resource Sobek, which promotes the extraction of frequent terms present in a text, the participants of this study created digital media narratives in English as a foreign language (FL). The undergraduate Brazilian students who participated in the research used the tool Sobek to mediate the production of fanfictions. In the proposed task, each student read a fanfiction and used the mining tool to develop graphs with recurrent terms found in the story. From the data analysis, it was observed that the use of a digital tool supported text production in the FL, and its following practice of digital literacy, as the authors relied on the mining resource to create new fanfictions.