ENGLISH LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THROUGH ONLINE FANFICTION READING
Keywords:
Keywords: fandom; fanfiction; English language acquisition; online language acquisition; reading comprehensionAbstract
Abstract: We call fanfiction the works and texts created by fans to fans. This study aims to define the beliefs and habits of online fanfiction readers and their relationship with English as a second language. We explored the linguistic influences of motivation and the affective filter (DÖRNYEI, 1998; GARDNER, 1991; KRASHEN, 1982) on informal language acquisition, while also bringing forth the concept of reading comprehension in this context (KRASHEN; BLAND, 2014). We gathered a brief history of fanfiction as a genre by Coppa (2006) as well as its characteristics (BLACK, 2006; TOSENBERGER, 2014) to justify the importance of the genre in language development. The instrument chosen for this research was a questionnaire, shared through social media, reaching over 100 responses from a diversity of international participants. With this variety of responses, the habits of fanfiction readers as well as their informal language acquisition input and views on language learning were investigated to find the approach used by fanfiction readers to acquire language. We found that our participants seeked the content rather than the language, as they saw development in their use of the language in informal context, and progress in vocabulary and overall written skills.
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