How playing video games can teach your kids to read. In 2008, Pew Internet Research found that more than one third of gamers regularly read game-related texts as part of their gameplay, including game reviews, strategy websites, fan fiction and forum discussions. For many young people, reading isn't replaced by video games, but an integral part of what it means to participate and play. Kids who play games display behaviours that, in other contexts, teachers and parents regard as the Holy Grail; for example, information seeking, community building, group organisation, computational thinking, solving problems and managing emotions. James Gee, a linguistics and literacy researcher, said that language isn't the only communication system available, and that many types of visual images and symbols have specific significances. He recommends we think of literacy in terms of semiotic domains - any set of practices that recruits one or more modalities to communicate meaning, e.g., oral or written language, images, equations, symbols, sounds, gestures, graphs, artefacts.

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