Elif Nihan Yılmaz received her BA in Foreign Language Education from Middle Eastern Technical University, Ankara, in July 2023. Since then, she has worked as an English teacher in a Turkish high school. In this article, she shares her observations and experiences in using unique materials while teaching English as a foreign language. Email: elifnihanyilmaz@gmail.com

 

Observations

As teachers working at high schools in Türkiye, we see how much students have issues with doing homework and preparing for exams. In the teachers’ lounge, we discuss this all the time, and with the complaints from parents stating that their kids cannot get their heads out of their phones and computers at home, we believe that the school system and the overuse of technology are not conducive to developing our learners’ communicative and cognitive skills.

One way of addressing learners’ communicative and cognitive skills is to expose them to literature. Using literature in ELT has many rewarding aspects including genuine enthusiasm and related gains in communicative language learning, an aspect not often offered by other materials. Reading literature means reading life (Hall, 2016). Another feature of comic books is that they help learners improve their creativity and develop their cross-cultural awareness (Ravichandran, 2016).

However, how can literature be integrated in school curricula and foreign language syllabi? In Türkiye, 9th graders have five hours of compulsory literature courses where they learn about all kinds of classics from Turkish Literature. Even with the reading hours delivered by our literature teachers, I noticed that some students still fail to gain a reading habit. So, I decided to include comic books, which are not heavy reading and seem to provide comprehensible input for learners due to their daily conversation elements and real-life scenarios as well as compelling content (Ravichandran, 2016). I was curious to find out whether using comic books would arouse my learners’ interest in literature and English in general.

Another reason why I came up with the idea of using comic books in ELT is the repetition of themes and content in English instruction at Turkish state schools as prescribed in the state curricula. While, of course, there is some good reason to recycle content, I often hear my 9th graders say: “Oh, we have learned about this in middle school, but I have no memory about the details, the grammar rules, the vocabulary, etc.” Then why shouldn’t we try something new? Instead of going through the usual movie, TV, and classic books cycle, why not try out something new, something else that the learners are likely to enjoy and is not mentioned in the curriculum?

According to Ravichandran (2016), comic books in the classroom have always been criticised for luring the learners away from literature, but this has never stopped the learners from reading them. Therefore, acknowledging the learners’ real interests, making comic books a part of ELT classroom instruction may break some barriers between learners and English as well as between learners and literature.

In the following section, I outline a lesson unit that I conducted with 9th graders at my school. It leads into a comic book-focus project homework. Avoiding too specific information on my specific school environment, I hope the outline is informative for language teachers who wish to integrate comics into their teaching.

That said, I need to inform the reader that the lesson unit was integrated into Theme 3 (Movies) of the state syllabus for 9th graders covered in the local coursebook I had to use (Bayraktar, 2023). My classroom was equipped with an interactive whiteboard which allowed me to make use of visual materials.

 

Lesson outline

Stage 1

I started with a revision of vocabulary related to movie types and other artefacts related to popular culture, thereby eliciting knowledge the learners had acquired in middle school. After that, I encouraged my students to express preference using a Venn diagram I showed:

 

I love …

I like …

I enjoy …

I’m crazy about…

 

I don’t mind…

I don’t like…

I can’t stand…

I hate …

I then showed some cover pages of popular comic books (Charlie Brown, SpongeBob, Naruto, Spiderman, Batman, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes). This stage was first conducted as a whole class conversation, and then as pair work to give learners who do not regularly participate in oral interaction an opportunity to express their preferences. I noticed that students who are indifferent towards English and are normally not eager to collaborate participated in the lesson. When the students were exposed to the comic books, even the ones showing indifferent behaviour, were excited and willing to participate. Some of the excitement of learners who read comic books regularly surpassed others, but even the ones who were not as familiar with the concept were willing to participate.

 

Stage 2

I then showed comic strips from the before mentioned comic books delivered in photocopies. I gave the learners time to figure out what was going on in the comic strips, to clarify vocabulary and comprehend the contents. The rationale for this stage was to provide the learners with models for their own comic strips to be produced in the following stage. It was actually an advantage to show samples of different comic genres (Western, Manga, Super heroes, detective stories), so that they could express their preferences towards specific comics and talk about their own habits of reading comic books.

 

Stage 3

I invited the students to write a review of their favourite comic books or one of the comic books shown at stage 2. This can be done as a collaborative activity with a partner or in groups, or individually. To introduce them to review writing, I delivered the following worksheet, which teachers can adapt or develop according to their own learner environment:

 

A. Circle the word or words that describe the comic book best.

 

B. Answer these questions.

• What kind of comic book is it?

• What do you think about the title? Do you like it?

• Explain the story without spoilers.

• Can the things in this comic book happen in real life?

• Should your friends read it?

• Is this comic book suitable for children under 7?Stage 4

Using Storyboard That (https://www.storyboardthat.com/), I asked the students to create their own comic strip. Since the technological options in our classroom were limited to one smartboard, this was conducted as a whole class activity. However, this activity could be used in an environment with a computer lab, allowing every learner to be creative in their way. Anyway, I was able to introduce them to how to use Storyboard That.

 

Stage 5: Project homework

In the Turkish school system, learners (in my case 9th graders) are assigned to deliver an annual project assignment that can be selected from the options offered by teachers in different subjects. So, a student may decide to complete this assignment in Turkish, English, mathematics, biology or any other lesson. I offered a comic book-themed project homework option, which eight out of the approximately 20 students in my class selected.

For this project, students were expected to choose a comic book and translate ten pages from it. Obviously, an alternative to this homework could have been asking the students to prepare a short comic book of their own, through hand drawing or digital materials such as Storyboard That. However not every student had access to these talents or materials, and it may have turned out to be too time-consuming in my context. Teachers in other contexts will probably find such an option attractive and feasible in their context. Revising my lesson plan, I definitely reconsider such an activity for my future teaching.

Informed by good reasons to integrate the learners’ first languages in foreign language teaching (Butzkamm & Caldwell, 2009; Cook, 2010), I decided to offer a translation activity. With a translation homework however, not only will they experience the efforts of being a translator, but they will (hopefully) enjoy working with a unique literary device that they are more prone to reading.

The comic books chosen by the students included Charlie Brown, Marsupilami, and comic books with technological content issued by the Scientific and Technological Research Institution of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK).

It was nice to see for me as the teacher that some learners were willing to work more on the project and added visual materials as well. At the end of the homework, the students were expected to write a short Turkish paragraph answering three questions:

• Did you enjoy doing this homework?

• When translating, what difficulties did you face?

• If you were given the option again, would you choose this homework?

With these questions, the benefits of this homework were easily estimated. I decided to have my learners write in Turkish because it would be easier for them to express their opinions.

A couple of students submitted the homework weeks earlier than the rest of their peers. Most of them answered the final question ‘yes’ and added that they would like to try to translate different comic books as well. One student also noted that it was an assignment testing their language proficiency, while others stated that the project was exciting, and it enabled them to learn new words.

An important response to this homework that I received was verbal, and it was on how different and therefore thrilling it was to be presented with a homework with a different purpose than the ones they had received in previous years of their education.

 

Conclusion

The general aim of this lesson unit was to improve the learners’ communicative skills, raise their interests in reading, and break the learning barrier between them and English. Though it can be said that the improvement in communicative skills have to be achieved through an extensive time of literature-based lessons, I observed that reading comics changed their reading habits and raised their interest for reading. I also observed through exam results that the learners had remembered more vocabulary than in other units. As a teacher, I also noticed how the perspective of the students towards English changed slightly. Seeing something different and getting out of the monotonous coursebook-led English learning environment increased their interest in English (cf. Rathert & Cabaroğlu, 2022). Therefore, the extensive use of comic books in ELT involving creativity and visual support can have beneficial impacts on the students’ communicative skills, reading habits and language learning, especially if it is a genre that they are or prone to engage in.

 

References

Bayraktar, N. (2023). English 9th Grade. Erkad

Butzkamm, W., & J. A. W. Caldwell (2009). The bilingual reform. A paradigm shift in foreign language teaching. Narr.

Cook, G. (2010). Translation in language teaching. Oxford University Press.

Hall, G. (2016). Using literature in ELT. In G. Hall (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of English language teaching (pp. 456-470). Routledge.

Rathert, S., & Cabaroğlu, N. (2022). Theorising textbook adaptation in English language teaching. CEPS Journal, 12(2), 169-188. https://doi.org/10.25656/01:25227

Ravichandran, R. (2016). Comics as resource for ELT educators. The IUP Journal of English Studies, 11(1), 70-74.

 

Please check the Pilgrims f2f courses at Pilgrims website.