Booktuber: promoting reading and literacy in the classroom among Spanish pre‐service teachers through a video review

• Published in: Literacy (Oxford, England) Vol. 58; no. 1; pp. 120 - 134
• Main Author: Pardo, Betlem Soler
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.01.2024
• Subjects: Booktuber; Didacticism; Elementary Education; English (Second Language); Literacy; literature reflection; Reading promotion; teachers training; Teaching; Undergraduate Students; Web 2.0 technologies
• ISSN: 1741-4350; 1741-4369
• DOI: 10.1111/lit.12346

Developments in technology have led to a rethinking of teaching delivery: instructors have found in digital devices an important way to attract students' attention. One of the many applications this technology could potentially have would be to encourage young learners to read through new multimedia products such as Web 2.0. In this article, I provide an account of teaching carried out at the University of Valencia, in the ‘Foreign Language I (English)’ module of the Primary Education degree. The activity was based on the characteristics of Booktubers with the goal of, first, promoting reading and reflection on literature and, second, to improve linguistic, communicative, literary and digital competences in EFL through the elaboration of a video review in the classroom. Thus, I have focused on the formal style from a didactic viewpoint, yet undergraduates had to read literature and write a digital review as part of the tasks to be assessed in the subject. For this purpose, the Youtube platform will be shown to be seen as an emerging source of exploration, which could be exploited as a successful didactic tool. Finally, I also set out to show the challenges both students and teacher had to face throughout the process of using the Booktuber tool.