COMICS AND PREJUDICE

For many years, the use of comics has been seen as something not pedagogical at all. There are many teachers who still regard comics as something that students read at home about superheroes or some stuff like that. Yet, there are many trends which claim that the use of comics in class could motivate our students not only towards an enhancement of their imagination but also towards the improvement of some skills like writing.

Even though our students are all day writing in English without noticing it (titles from songs, hagstags in Instagram…) it tends to be difficult for them to write a short story or a narrative in this second language. It is both complex for them to find suitable lexicon as well as the follow a determinate structure.

In this sense, the use of comic may motivate them hugely towards this aim, even more when they are asked to carry out this activity using a specific app as it is Pixton. Pixton allows our students to create determinate comics in a very intuitive way. And better yet, it is completely free in its simple version.  
Here can you find some examples:
https://pixton.com/es/:phhl0o75
https://www.pixton.com/es/*PKL94DSM
https://pixton.com/es/:0kd4q8iu
https://www.pixton.com/es/*ZKPGKKWT
https://pixton.com/es/:siwbjx2z
https://www.pixton.com/es/*7V9STOF7

In order to develop this activity, I asked my students to work in pairs (although one group was of three because of the number of students). These groups were done as they liked it since I consider that it is sometimes better to let them a bit of freedom in this type of activities in which I will ask them to work out of school too.

First of all, they were asked to create a situation for their comic. In order to do so, I asked them to create questions using the wh- particles so that they knew more or less what their story would be about. After that, I gave them liberty to choose the setting as well as the plot but they were given instructions to use at least three words of the vocabulary seen in class and to include the grammar of this unit.

In this sense, my aim with this activity was not only to enhance their writing skills as well as their imagination by creating a comic, but also the review of the grammatical point of the unit as well as the use in a given context of the vocabulary worked in the unit. In this way, thanks to this one single activity, I could kill two birds with one stone ;)

The use of Pixton is an amazing way of improving, as I have already said, the imagination of the students. They feel completely motivated when doing the tasks and even, some of them have done it leaving me completely speechless with their results. The plots that they have imagined are completely unbeliable. I do think that this is what they enjoyed the most, the possibility of creating something out of the blue, with little restrictions apart from a couple of rules already mentioned.

Yet, not all that glitters is gold. For next time, I will ask them to send me a draft since students were asked to bring to class the final version and to show it to the rest of the class before hanging it on the virtual wall that we have on Padlet. These final versions present sometimes mistakes and it is a pity because they are very nicely done. However, as Bernard Shaw said, “Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same mistakes a second time”