This talk explores the use of fanfiction, writing that recycles and reimagines existing characters and storylines from books, movies and television, as a pedagogical tool in the English classroom to bridge both literary and language learning. It follows the implementation of The Blogging Hobbit, a task-based fanfiction project based on Tolkien’s The Hobbit, that was carried out as part of a course for students in a teacher education program at Malmö University and explores the outcomes and challenges that emerged.

1. There and Back
Again
Shannon Sauro
Malmö University
Shannon.sauro@mah.se

2. Bridging the Language & Literature Divide
Within ELT and foreign language teacher
education in general, there is an interest in
bridging the long-standing division
between literary studies and language
training.
(Paran, 2008).

3. "writing that continues, interrupts,
reimagines, or just riffs on stories and
characters other people have already
written about."
(Jamison, 2013 p. 17)
Fanfiction

4. Inspiration for task and
technology and model from
the Harry Potter role play fanfic
community, Darkness Rising, on
LiveJournal.
• Communal Blog
• Individual players/writers
participated using blogs made
for their character
• Stories begin with a prompt or
background in a post.
• The story evolves in nested
comments
(Sauro, 2014)

5. • Malmö University
• Secondary school English teacher education program
• Children’s literature course
• 1st and 3rd semester students
• Organized into groups of 2-6
• Cohort 2013 (n=55)
• Cohort 2014 (n= 80)
Context & Participants

6. The Blogging Hobbit
A task-based fanfiction project (Sauro, 2014) culminating in the
writing of a collaborative story of a missing moment from Tolkien’s
The Hobbit and published in a blog or online fanfiction archive.
Task 1: Story outline and map.
Task 2: Blog-based collaborative role-play fanfiction
Task3: Reflective Paper

7. develop an outline of major plot points of a collaborative story
that consists of a missing moment from The Hobbit
&
create a map of an unchartered section of Middle Earth in
which this story takes place.
Task 1: Outline & Map

8. Build upon the outline and map generate in Part I to write a blog-
based collaborative story (role-play story) based on a missing
moment from The Hobbit.
Each writer will select one character and contribute 6
paragraphs to the story from that character’s voice and
perspective.
Task 2: Collaborative Fanfiction

9. 1. What did the collaborative role-play writing process require you
to pay careful attention to?
2. Describe at least two linguistic features of your character’s
style of speaking or thinking that you were careful to include.
Task 3: Reflective Paper
3. In what way can creative writing like this influence
the development of reading, writing, listening and
conversation skills in English?

10. Guiding Questions
1. What kind of learning results from fanfiction
tasks like these?
2. How does classroom fanfiction compare to
real world fanfiction?
3. Can such tasks be motivating to non-fans?

11. Focus group Interview with “The Dream Team” – an
intact group (n=6) comprised of fans and nonfans from
Cohort 2014 who chose to publish their 16,000 word
story in a fanfiction archive (Ao3) instead of a blog.
Completed Fanfiction Stories (n=31) – Cohorts 2013 & 2014,
collaborative fanfiction based on a missing moment from
Tolkien’s The Hobbit. (Each ranging from 2000-16,000 words)
Reflective Essays (n=122) – Cohorts 2013 & 2014
Hobbit Fanfiction from Ao3 (n=13) – Nov 2014-Jan 2015
The Data

12. “this writing activity has
influenced my language
skills…. During this
project I have been able
to expand my repertoar
[sic] of English words
which are not so
commonly used in
everyday English
anymore.”
(Student 14, Cohort 2013)
“I am not that much of
a reader of fiction
compared to others
and I feel that my
vocabulary have
increased when it
come to creative
writing.”
(Student 30, Cohort 2013)

13. “[a]fter a short
while, the writing
became very fluent
and I did not have
to think too hard
before writing”
(Student 40,
Cohort 2013)

14. It is lying still, yet it spins around
It tries to move but its body is bound
All because of the precious it stole
Fool us again and they eats it whole.
(from The Mirkwood Mysteries)

15. The Dream Team
“I think I identify myself as a fan. I think I’ve always done that, or at least
to some degree, like, had a special interest in something.” E (male)
“I identify as a fan since, like, the beginning of time.” B (female)
“In doing the Blogging Hobbit, I realized, I’m not a fan. People are a lot
more crazy than I am.” K (female)
“I’m not a hardcore fan, but I am a fan of stuff.” F (female)
“I suppose I’m a fan. My first fandom, if you can call it that, is classical
literature.” M (female)
“I’ve never really self-identified as a fan of anything, but I suppose I’m
the most involved in the discussion of Doctor Who.” L (male)

16. “Fanfics that get really popular, they kind of answer to
some kind of fantasy that people have about the
characters. Or something they really want to explore or
they create an alternate universe … We didn’t have
anything like that, really. I mean, I think ours was very,
kind of, very much like the book it a way, so maybe it
wasn’t as exciting as some other fanfiction because it
wasn’t innovating in that way…
We were trying to make it look like it could actually be a
part of the book. So I think that’s the difference as well
between what we did and we planned and what’s on
fanfiction forums.”
(B. Dream Team Interview)

17. Keyword Analysis
Corpus-based analysis that allows for
identification of the most significant
differences between two corpora.
“key word”, “a word that occurs with
unusual frequency in a given text” (Scott
1997, p. 236).

18. The Corpora
Learner Fanfiction (172,911)
• N=31 stories produced by
Cohorts 2013 & 2014
• 2000-16000 words each
• Rated Teen
• Gen
• Canon compliant
Ao3 Fanfiction (92,760)
• N=18 stories posted Dec
1 2013 – Jan 31, 2015
• 2000-16000 words each
• Rated Teen
• Gen (no het or slash)
• Not alternate universe
or other sub-genres

19. Third Person Plural Pronouns: we, our, us
Character Names: Gandalf, Beorn, Balin,
Elrond, Gollum, Dori, Bombur, Bilbo
Species: dwarves, goblins, wizard, elves
Less Common Irregular Plural: dwarfs
Keywords in Learner Fanfiction

20. Third person singular pronouns: she, her, his, him
Kinship terms: son, sister, mother, brother, uncle
Character names: Thranduil, Legolas, Tauriel, Bifur
Contracted forms: d, s, re, t
Negative Keywords

21. “A fan is a person with a relatively deep
positive emotional conviction about
someone or something famous, usually
expressed through a recognition of style
or creativity.”
(Duffet, 2013, p. 18)
What is a Fan?

22. For some people, it was just a school
project. And I don’t think it was just a
school project for us in that way. People
were like, I want to get it done….
People were like, on my god this one
person in my group hasn’t done
anything. I’m doing all the work.
(B., Dream Team Interview)

23. Motivating & Demotivating NonFans
People associate The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit with a lot of
lore, a lot of hardcore fans and all of that. And maybe it’s kind of
scaring people off a bit.
(B. , Dream Team Interview)
Maybe we should use, like, a book or movie that no one
knows that well because you always find fans like The Hobbit
or Tolkien or Sherlock Holmes or something.
(K., Dream Team Interview)
I think you would have chosen something that would be more
suitable for the pop culture of our day and age.
(E., Dream Team Interview)

24. “The slippery slope idea assumes
that fandom feeds a twisted journey
into murderous obsession that can
draw an otherwise sane
individual from normality to violent
insanity through their engagement
with popular culture.”
(Duffett, 2013, p. 95)

25. “…I would choose another book.
I felt it unfair to work with The
Hobbit on such a project since a
big part was to connect with a
character from the book and
write from that perspective. To
choose a book with absolutely
no women at all made me not
wanting to take neither Tolkien
nor this assignment to heart.”
(Nonfan, Cohort 2014)

26. “It has also made me
appreciate fiction in a way I
have never done before. I am
even reading The Lord of the
Rings now, which is very unlike
me.”
(Nonfan of Fiction, Cohort 2014)

27. In Sum
1. Language development included word learning, writing fluency, and
fiction writing skills.
2. Pedagogical fanfiction’s resemblance to RL fanfiction is clearly
influencedby characteristics of the assignment.
3. Motivation varies among nonfans and may be addressed through
providing less ‘fannish’ source texts with a range of characters.

28. References
Duffett, M. (2013). Understanding fandom: An introduction to the study of media fan culture. New
York/London: Bloomsbury.
Jamison, A. (2013). ‘Why Fic?’ in A. Jamison (ed.). Fic: Why fanfiction is taking over the world.
Dallas, TX: Smart Pop Books.
Lin, A.Y.M. (22 March 2015). Agency, language learning, and creative digital content production.
Paper presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Paran, A. (2008). The role of literature in instructed foreign language learning and teaching: An
evidence-based survey. Language Teaching 41(4), 465-496.
Sauro, S. (2014). Lessons from the fandom: Task models for technology-enhanced language
learning. In M. González-Lloret & L. Ortega (Eds). Technology-mediated TBLT: Researching
technology and tasks, (pp. 239-262). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Sauro, S., & Sundmark, B. (Under review). Report from Middle Earth: Fanfiction tasks in the EFL
classroom.
Scott, M. (1997). PC analysis of key words - and key key words. System 25, 233-245.