Alicia Peterson

11/6/19
TL 413
Text Analysis

Directions:

1. For your selected content material (trade book, textbook chapter, video, or
other), there are these tasks:
1. Identify the text’s key ideas, concepts or events,
2. Reflect on experiences or knowledge that would help students
connect these to their lives,
3. Identify potential barriers to student understanding (particularly
language use and culture);
4. Reflect on what you might do to help all students access the
materials. USE COURSE RESOURCES whenever possible to
answer the questions and cite or quote those resources when
possible (25 points).
2. Share your work on the discussion board. Peer-review two posts (5
participation points).

Text/Material Analysis

Identify the material in APA format (visit the Purdue OWL or another resource for
help):

National Center for Families Learning (n.d.). How Are Video Games Made? Retrieved
November 6, 2019, from https://www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-are-video-
games-made.

Sponsored by Delta Dental.

______________________________________________________________________
__

Task 1: Key concept identification

● List major concepts, ideas, and/or events from the material.

○ How video games were made
○ How many people are required to make a video game
○ How long does it take to make a video game
Alicia Peterson
11/6/19
TL 413
Text Analysis

● List supporting concepts (important details), ideas, and/or events.

○ Vocabulary that may be unknown
○ Video to put a visual to the article
○ Video games tell a story (it could be a historical event)
○ Artists, designers, and programmers all collaborate to make a video game
○ They use the laws of physics to create graphics
○ Coding and programming runs the way the game works (relates to math)

Task 2: Experience and knowledge

● List three experiences that would help your students connect the key
concepts to their lives.
○ Whether or not they have played video games before?
○ Have they ever played a game with a friend?
○ Have they ever bounced a bouncy ball?

● List 3 pieces of knowledge that would help your students connect the key
concepts to their lives.
○ What are characters in a story?
○ Doing math in class
○ Speaking a different language/hearing someone speak a different
language

Task 3: Barrier identification

Answer these questions as specifically as possible:

● Is the material presented in a register that students are familiar with, or is it

more or less formal than they are used to? Give two examples.
Alicia Peterson
11/6/19
TL 413
Text Analysis

○ The material is presented as kid-friendly language as they can break

down. Although most of the text is formal language. Below is an example
of informal language:
■ For example, “Characters are expected to move like real people…”
○ The formal language presented in the article explains how coding and
physics work.
■ For example, “If you think about controlling a particular character in
a game, there’s a seemingly-endless variety of things you can do
with the character. Code must be written to account for all of the
possible choices you can make with your character.”

● With what specific language structures or grammar might students have

difficulty? Give 2 examples and explain why.
○ Uses complex sentences
■ Ex. “Computer programmers must write millions of lines of
computer language instructions — called code — that
control all aspects of the game. Code can be written in a
variety of different computer languages, such as C++,
Python, Visual Basic, and Perl.”
● Students might feel that this is complex because the
narrator/author is communicating that there are other
languages that have to do with coding. If a student has never
heard of this, it may be confusing to understand that this isn’t
necessarily a language that people speak verbally, but rather
language used through computers.
○ Tense Switches
■ Ex. “If you think about controlling a particular character in a
game, there's a seemingly endless variety of things you can
do with that character.”
■ “Today's gamers expect life-like video games with the best
graphics possible”
■ “Unlike movies, which contain a single storyline, video
games must account for all the potential paths intense
gameplay can take.”
Alicia Peterson
11/6/19
TL 413
Text Analysis

● Students might find these switches difficult to understand

because the author is including the reader in the article from
a different point of view and then back to the factual
language and knowledge of the article.

● From whose point of view is the material presented? What difference might
this make to comprehension?
○ The article is presented from a narrator’s point of view, or a third-person
point of view.
■ This point of view could be the easiest to follow because the
narrator is communicating in an informational way.
■ A reader could have a difficult time comprehending the article
because the article jumps between modern-day video games and
late video games.

● What vocabulary in the materials might ELLs have trouble with? Give three
examples and explain why.
○ Coding
■ It is described as a different language. Coding is specific to
computer language in this article, but some people might
understand code as a secret, or something used to keep a number
a secret from others.
○ Simulation
■ The word itself is large and daunting. It also means to test
something as if it is a real-world situation. It often is the creation of
something. That can be misleading.
○ Bond
■ Bond has a few definitions. Some of which might not translate well.
In this case, bond is referring to a relationship.

● What cultural aspects of the book might ELLs find challenging? Why?
○ Students in other cultures might not play video games. In this case, the
lingo would be completely new to them. In addition, they wouldn’t
understand the short stories that are meant to connect the reader to the
article.
Alicia Peterson
11/6/19
TL 413
Text Analysis

○ Students may not have had to learn certain topics or subjects in other
schools or cultures that they are apart of. If students don’t understand or
know what physics is, then understanding the concepts within physics and
video games will be a challenge to them.

Task 4: Reflection

What might you as the teacher do to help students who face challenges with the
material you selected? List at least 3 strategies that might help, for what issue they
might be helpful, and how you could tell (assess) whether they helped.

For this article, it does a nice job of highlighting words that may be difficult for students.
So one strategy would be to have my students watch the video that the article has
provided beforehand. I would also present them with the vocabulary that will be in the
article (before the video) and the definitions. The hope for this is that students will have
a slightly better understanding of the words that they will be encountering. They will also
have a visual for the article and vocabulary words when watching the video, another
strategy for a language barrier. Once the video is played, I would ask if there are any
questions so that they can be discussed amongst the class before diving into an
individual or paired reading. The discussion is meant to give the students a safe space
to share their concerns before working individually or in pairs. This will also allow me to
see what I may have missed. The last strategy I could use is to pair students up. This
would help with the lack of cultural knowledge. In pairing students, I would want to make
sure that I am monitoring their conversations and provide them with discussion
questions to follow along with the article.