Comics in the Classroom: Something to Be Taken Seriously

Children enjoy reading comics, so it makes perfect sense to use such a resource to enhance English-language learning. Using dialogues created for audiovisual materials that reflect curriculum requirements of English language teaching and learning, it is possible to create supplementary gap-fill activity cartoons to recycle content in line with a required schema of works. This paper recounts an ongoing longitudinal project that is in the process of designing a comics series based on the curriculum requirements for the first six years of English language basic education (primary) in Thailand. The dialogues are based on the language found in end-of-year examination preparatory books (O Net and N Net) and input into an Internet-based comic-making application, www.makebeliefscomix.com. Early indications are that students benefit from the recycling of language and the introduction in the early years of activities such as gap-fill. Moreover, students have been able to practice writing as an additional activity. Thailand has an archaic education system that has an emphasis on basic literacy and rote memorisation, resulting in Thailand’s TOEFL scores for university entrance overseas ranking amongst the lowest in Asia (Kurlantzick, 2010). Academic expectations in Thailand have been low for many years; students rarely fail English subjects even though their English skills are weak. The idea of maintaining high standards and allowing students to fail (Andrade, 2010) is uncommon and has been reflected in the lacklustre approach to academic support for the teaching profession. Moreover, internal quality control mechanisms are lacking (Graham, 2009a), resulting in educational institutions becoming “robot factories” designed to maintain the existing class boundaries within society (Yatvin, 2010). What is needed are communicative materials that can be administered in the classroom in a learner-centred way. The vast majority of primary school teachers of English in Thailand did not major in English language teaching and so, by their own admission (Mackenzie, 2002, 2004), do not possess the English language skills or communicative teaching style to teach in a learner-centred way in accordance with the 1999 Education Act (Foley, 2005). Thailand shares similarities with countries like Iran, in that there is a lack of personal English language skills and poor social conditions for these teachers (Namaghi, 2010). Language Education in Asia, 2011, 2(1), 92-102. http://dx.doi.org/10.5746/LEiA/11/V2/I1/A07/Graham Language Education in Asia, Volume 2, Issue 1, 2011 Graham Page 93 Ujiie and Krashen (1996) explain that reading comics does not inhibit other types of reading and that it in fact facilitates heavier reading, which in time could lead to students becoming better readers (Krashen, 1993). Unlike film, comics have a “permanent, visual component” (Williams, 1995, p. 2), and by mixing comics with “dialogue, which is permanent, but not visual” (p. 3), it is possible to create an exciting new set of English language teaching materials suitable for use by primary school students. The tasks they perform are designed to motivate students to use language for specific aims (Van den Branden, 2009) where vocabulary is predominantly learned by focusing on form for better retention (Laufer, 2005, as cited in Keating, 2008, p. 381). The process detailed in this paper started as a teacher training project and progressed to making dialogues from national examinations and adapting them to scenes for a set of DVDs (Smooth Transitions) following the primary school curriculum. After these initial tasks were completed, the dialogues were then used with speech recognition software and in the making of a series of comics.