NARRATIVE ROLES IN E-LEARNING GAMES
NARRATIVE ROLES IN E-LEARNING GAMES

Summary/Abstract: It has become a common place to state that narratives form the essence of communication in our lives. Still, there is no better way to acknowledge this reality than by admitting it as a simple fact; what is more, the idea that we, people, are so easily manipulated by the power of words has challenged communication experts. Many specialist shave tried their hands at defining and categorizing narratives, and the result is a discouragingly huge number of criteria and studies. Moreover, as narratologists have pointed out, narratives may take different forms, from stories in books to cartoons, police reports, news articles, and games. Almost a century ago, Vladimir Propp studied one hundred Russian fairy-tales in an attempt to assign roles to the characters inthose stories and explain a certain pattern of communication. Since then, various theorists of communication have been on a mission to dissect and analyze every aspect relating to narratives and their influence on people’s lives. With the emergence of the Internet, narratives have taken new forms, from blogs (replacing diaries and journals) to games of all types. Because of their purpose both as fun-providers and educational helpers, e-learning game shave become indispensable tools in schools and homes alike. Consequently, the aim of this paper is to discuss narrative roles as they appear in some of the e-learning games we use in the language class. In my analysis, I will try to emphasize the influence of computer games on the success of the language class, and on students’ social dynamics. Since games enter a special type of narrative, I will first discuss the way in which computer games may be transformed from entertainment into educational tools. Secondly, I will focus on the roles that add a special flavor to certain games and examine the possibility of helping students to get a double benefit from playing those games, by having fun and learning at the same time.

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