We know that comics are great collectables. They have been called assets more and more lately. They are also great reading material for fans and new collectors alike. Everyone knows that comics are quick and easy reads, but the graphics and extra features that accompany the texts dialogue make them an exclusive and valuable source for beginners. Exploring the comic books and graphic novels properly, readers can enhance their skills and knowledge in vocabulary, reading, writing, speaking, and language comprehension. More and more, comics are being used in school settings and materials for readers to learn with.
Stay Motivated
It is difficult to motivate children or even adults to read when they see passages of black letters that build up an endless pattern. But what if you have only three words to read, or only one, or several letters, and bright pictures around with a catching story on top.
Comic books change the process of reading and attitude to it. They turn reading into a more interactive and creative process. While you have only a small amount of text, which keeps the reader from being overwhelmed about the reading time ahead, you get a complex source of writing, speaking, comprehension task.
Enhance Reading Skills
Although you are not doomed to read whole passages or boring articles, you are still to do some reading.
But don’t be skeptical since comic books consist not only of exclamations and emotional language, they also include some authentic words, phrases, and sentences to read and learn from. Many kids trying to learn English learn from reading comic books.
More to this, comic books are great sources for self-education or beginners of any kind with the illustrations simplifying language comprehension. It means that you don’t have to read and translate into your mother tongue, but only read, relish the language and get the meaning from the pictures around.
Practice Writing
The small text contained in a comic book is not a drawback. On the contrary, they leave the reader to fill in the spaces, which helps them develop their imagination and practice more language skills.
This means that they can fill in the blanks mentally, to build up the story from the pictures and words they are given. This can be a task given by the teacher or used by a self-education student as well.
James Drake, a successful article writer from the Evening News, recalls, “When the time came to write my dissertation lit review, I was grateful to my school English teachers for writing tasks while reading comic books”. So, the strategy works and you can experience it yourself.
Deepen Vocabulary Load
While most of a comic book’s story is mainly built on dialogue, the reader can also deepen their vocabulary in spoken language as a primary result. This way you catch new language expressions and phrases with no hurdles by getting their meaning from the illustration context.
They may say that comic books are only primitive superhero stories that can teach you nothing from the foreign language perspective. But mind that there are plenty of classic novels and bestselling books turned into graphic novels bringing world-known words and word combinations with them. This way you enhance your language knowledge and broaden your cultural outlook as well with ease.
Speak Out
Coupling reading of comic books together with writing tasks, or speaking exercises that can be done, too.
Having a numerous illustrations at hand, readers can practice speaking in different ways. Building up dialogues, telling stories, describing pictures, and more ideas may be applied by teachers and students to improve speaking skills.
Either you talk about Mr. Darcy, Batman, or Sponge Bob, the thing is that your learning process is fun and useful at the same time.
Benefit More
Comic books graphic novels have great potential as educational tools.
By learning with an interesting story you stay motivated and get better and faster results. By reading small texts you learn to read with no difficulties, and with illustrations around you comprehend the language with ease. By having interesting words and pictures at hand you can also add to reading and writing skills with the appropriate tasks. By having the range of comic book kinds and various languages inside you acquire new language knowledge in different directions.
These are not the only ways to benefit from comics. So, explore more, read comic books, and get educated with ease.
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Been picking up FCBD issues for my daughter (she’s 8) and seeing what she gravitates to. She loves to draw and I think graphic novels hit that nice balance of having interesting stories with some challenging word spread about…and I find her practicing drawing the scenes and characters of her favorite stories.
Yesterday she handed me 20 printer pages Of sketches she drew wanting me to scan them onto the computer to make them into a comic book.
So definitely been a good influence in my daughter and I really appreciate the FCBD children’s comics they put out every year as it really helps me find her interests without breaking the bank trying different r things. She has some anxiety issues. During the Pandemic, and her drawing and story telling have always been her creative outlet and coping mechanism…so it’s good to see her when she’s taking time reading, writing and/or drawing. It doesn’t matter that it’s comics or graphic novels.
Right now her favorite is Sue & Tai-Chan which just came out with a new graphic novel about a week ago. She also likes Phoebe and her Unicorn (she likes cats and unicorns, like many girls her age).
I teach 2nd graders reading and it is often difficult because they come from low income single parent homes, homeless shelters, etc. I often use comics and give them there own comic (with the donations from several comic book stores and individuals out there) so they can read and take home to practice. I been using “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur” because both characters appeal to both genders and they both gravitate towards a school child who displays frustrations. 🙂 Thank You for this article.