Comics, the forgotten ally!

Hello I am Carlos Benito and as you can see my blog is becoming a space where you readers and I can reflect about topics related to what being a teacher implies and also what being an English teacher means. In this entry I would love to talk about a useful forgotten tool that could help us, as English teachers but also teachers from other subjects, to encourage our students to include the habit of reading in their routine, yes as you could see in the title of this entry I am talking about the comic.

The Department of Education of Catalonia and a great amount of English teachers have always been worried about the lack of a reading culture in our classes, not only in the English subject but also in Catalan and Spanish. It’s true that nowadays, though, students must read Catalan and Spanish books but not as frequently they must read English books, so if there is actually a lack of a reading culture in our classes, this attitude of underestimate the importance of English leads to a total neglect of the activity of reading English texts. This means that students not only have poor reading comprehension skills but also they are in need of different English resources that can help them to improve their English language knowledge.

That is why I think that we should introduce the comic to our English classes because it’s a tool that offer students the possibility of learning new vocabulary, helping them to improve their reading comprehension skills and having a good time while reading. Moreover, the appearance of pictures can help them to understand better what they’re reading and to give sense to the idioms and common phrases used in English. This activity can help them to be motivated by lecture and could be applied not only to English classes but also to Spanish and Catalan ones.

To sum up, the comic is a tool that some of us used to have a good time but I think that teachers have underestimated its power because while the reader is having a good time walking through the bullets, unconsciously he/she is learning new vocabulary, making sense of what he’s reading and fomenting their imagination by creating expectations of what can happen next in the story.

Naruto one of the most famous manga of all times. Really entertaining!