Critical literacies and graphic novels for English language learners: Teaching Maus (original) (raw)
Related papers
Expanding Literacies through Graphic Novels
English Journal, 2006
offers a rationale, based on the need for current students to learn multiple lit eracies, for the use of graphic novels in the high school English class. She highlights several titles, suggests possible classroom strategies, and discusses some of the obstacles teachers may face in adding graphic novels to their curriculum. Time has arrived to broaden the canons of traditional education and the curriculum.. .. Using critical pedagogy to integrate the new forms of visual and electronic "texts" repre sents a curriculum requiring new competencies and a new definition of what constitutes learning as well as how and when it takes place.-Laudislaus M. Semali, Literacy in Multimedia America:
The book is an edited volume made of three sections, each divided into several chapters. The first section focuses on different possibilities for the adoption of sequential art in the classroom, from introductory to advanced composition writing. In the second section, the graphic novel is foregrounded as a unique literary genre where the editor makes reference to authors who advocate graphic novels to be regarded as literature in their own right. The third section is concerned with graphic novels' potential for triggering discussions that create opportunities for students to gain insights into the notions of social justice, identity, and empathy. In the introductory chapter of the book, which is a collection of essays on the use of graphic novels in the English classrooms, Burger enumerates the outstanding benefits of teaching graphic novels such as engaging reluctant readers, encouraging students to view familiar knowledge from a new perspective, activating, and developing students' multiple literacy skills due to the inextricable combination of text and image in graphic novels. In this collection, the editor has attempted to feature essays that provide specific examples and in-depth assignment overviews which could be incorporated into educational settings. Given the enumerable instances of implementing graphical novels into English classrooms, the editor hopes that the present collection of essays would convince the readers to move towards various other pedagogical possibilities for further multimodal engagement. However, it would be highly desirable to have addressed the biggest barriers in integrating graphic novels in secondary content classrooms, the distinct literacies needed to read graphic novels, and to draw up clear Content list available at http://ijltr.urmia.ac.ir
Graphic Novels in the ESL Classroom
I sketch an agenda for innovative pedagogy and classroom-based research, individual and collaborative, centered on experimenting with “getting graphic” (Gorman, 2003) hands-on in the ESL syllabus, concentrating on graphic novels and biographies (abbreviated as GN). I wish to argue that TESL teachers need to begin to experiment with incorporating the genre of graphic novels and related graphic non-fiction narratives – and even comic books and Japanese-style manga and anime -- as an alternative multimodal form of text in EFL pedagogy.
Graphic novels: An alternative approach to teach English as a foreign language
This article reports the findings of a study that investigated the role of graphic novels in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) to International Baccalaureate students (aged 15-16) in TED Ankara College Foundation Private High School. Two intact 10th grade classes were randomly assigned to the control and experimental groups who studied the play of Macbeth for various in-class activities. A questionnaire, semi-structured interview and achievement test (post-test) were employed to gather data from the participants. The findings revealed that there was a significant difference in the scores of the participants in the experimental and control groups, with the graphic novel playing a significant role in understanding (i) literature elements such as symbol, setting and foreshadowing, (ii) inference and (iii) vocabulary. However, it did not play a significant role in answering comprehension questions, discussing quotations, and analysing comparison-contrast or cause-effect relationships. Furthermore, the findings revealed that graphic novel greatly shaped and influenced the critical thinking and literary devices, and vocabulary learning skills of participants. The present study calls for integrating graphic novels into the syllabi of the relevant schools as these materials appeal to the students’ visual senses and yield more insights compared with traditional plain literary texts. Keywords: Graphic novels; literary texts; critical thinking; EFL; motivation
(Re)producing difference: the pedagogy of graphic narratives for critical visual literacy
In her recent book (Re)thinking Orientalism: Using Graphic Narratives to Teach Critical Visual Literacy (2015) Rachel Bailey Jones argues ‘that educators need to first present the problematic, stereotypical images and text for analysis to understand how and why more authentic representations can counteract bias and lead to change’ (2015, p. 1). I have done that many times with the cohort the above preservice teacher is in, and ensuing student discussions have wonderfully illustrated what ‘authentic’ or com- plexly nuanced representations might look and sound like. However, as a long list of academics and activists have shown, privilege is hard to budge. Nonetheless, Rachel Bailey Jones attends to perhaps an equally pervasive stereotype to the one I was dealing with (sex/gender/sexuality), in Orientalism and Islamaphobia, through an attention to visual texts, or graphic narratives. The New London Group (1996) argued for a pedagogy of multiliteracies some time ago and in the same vein, Jacobs (2007), among others, has worked with graphic narratives as serious forms of multimodal texts, arguably increasingly becoming a major genre with the digitally mediated world: I wish to move beyond seeing the reading of comics as a debased or simplified word-based literacy. Instead, I want to advance two ideas: (1) reading comics involves a complex, multimodal literacy; and (2) by using comics in our classrooms, we can help students develop as critical and engaged readers of multimodal texts. (p. 19)
Graphic Novels as a Teaching Tool for Raising Intercultural Sensitivity in Primary English Classroom
KNjIŽEVNOST ZA DECU U NAUCI I NASTAVI, 2022
As multimodal texts in which both pictures and words are used to communicate meaning, graphic novels are increasingly finding their place in a foreign language classroom. While multimodality supports comprehension and increases motivation for reading in a foreign language, graphic novel contents offer ample opportunities for developing the 21st century skills, like visual literacy, critical and creative thinking, problem solving, communicative competence, and intercultural awareness and sensitivity. The paper explores how primary learners’ intercultural sensitivity can be developed through a number of age- and language-appropriate activities applied before, during and after reading a graphic novel American Born Chinese by Gene Yang (2006). The aim of the paper is to support the didactic potential and pedagogical value of graphic novels to foster intercultural learning and develop empathy in primary English language learners.
Carving a Niche: Graphic Novels in the English Language Arts Classroom (2007)
The introduction to the 2007 NCTE edited collection _Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel_, still a best-seller for that organization, "Carving the Niche" sets forth the thesis that there is a graphic novel for every learner in every classroom, details what research says about comics' potentials for myriad student populations, and suggests routes for future researchers who seek to study the intersections of comics and literacy.
International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research, 2018
Through the multitude of media and other forms of visual, verbal, and physical representation that is the modern school curriculum, teachers must make calculated decisions about curriculum. These decision affect not only the extent or depth of a subject that they teach, but also in the pedagogy through which they do it. The development of a critical literacy skillset lies at the ultimate end of literacy or reading instruction. This critical literacy skillset represents an essential part of the voice that is being developed by each student (Morrell, 2007). Through this voice, students exercise the skillsets required to engage their communities and other social contexts and promote greater understanding and change. Teachers who work to this instructional end make use of a wide range of curricular vehicles and so the choice of these vehicles becomes of paramount importance (Moss, 2007). This researcher will make the argument, as have many before, that comic books and graphic novels represent a largely untapped resource for the degree of influence they have. This influence comes not only in the engaging nature of the medium, but also in the ability to use important elements of art and story in a symbiotic fashion. In this way, each draws the best from the other.
Critical literacy as an approach to literary study in the multicultural, high-school classroom
2011
As an approach to literary study, critical literacy is not a widespread practice in New Zealand secondary schools. This article draws on a major project on teaching literature in the multicultural classroom that take place over two years in 2008-2009. In it we report on a case study where a Year 13 English teacher designed and tested a novel English programme with a reputedly less able and culturally diverse group of final-year students entitled "13 English-Popular Culture". In it, she guided her students through a range of reading tasks aimed at developing in her students an awareness of ways in which texts position readers to take up certain meanings and not others through the language used. Over the course of the programme, students moved from compliant readers to readers who were sensitized to the manipulative power of texts. They enjoyed being exposed to a variety of theme-related texts, especially when these empowered them by enabling them to deploy their own cultural resources in responding to and challenging the texts they encountered. Students needed careful scaffolding in respect of metalinguistic understanding in order to be able to discuss the specific ways in which language constructs meaning. Indeed, these students struggled with this aspect of a critical literacy approach. However, despite the fact that these students were engaged in high-stakes assessment at a higher level than in the previous year, all gained more NCEA credits than they had in Year 12.