Read and navigate on Dante's route of hell

Abstract

Traditionally, the school’s concern in regards to Portuguese language teaching has been based on the reading of canons and an apparent failure in the formation of readers, which is verified through examinations that evaluate the level of literacy of students who complete the Elementary and Middle School in Brazil (INAF, 2016). These indicators demonstrate the need to reflect on sociocultural changes in society and their implications for the school. Thus, this qualitative intervention research, carried out in a public school, focuses on the use of video games in the classroom, as a tool for reading and producing meaning and aims to investigate the relationship between “read and navigate” in the digital narrative Dante’s Inferno. The research has as a theoretical-methodological basis the multiple reflections on: ludoletramento, according to Zagal (2010); the relationship between syncretic texts and teaching and other concepts from the theory of semiotics that serve both the analysis of the game itself, in its narrative bias, and the observation of the interactive phenomena that occurs in the relationship between the game and the player, according to Landowski (2005) and Meneghelli (2009). The research results point to the indisputable viability of a proposal for the use of video games as a teaching strategy and allows to reflect on a differentiated school practice, consistent with the new times and concerned with (re)awakening interest in reading in a school situation.