>From rmontes who-is-at cca.pue.udlap.mxThu Nov 30 08:55:19 1995
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 15:48:11 -0600 (CST)
From: rosa graciela montes <rmontes who-is-at cca.pue.udlap.mx>
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
Cc: xmca <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Subject: Re: Request for interesting story book series for ESL students
On Mon, 27 Nov 1995, Angel M.Y. Lin wrote:
>
>
> Children in Hong Kong read a lot of comic strips, especially those
> beautifully drawn and action- (somtimes sex-) packed ones, mostly imported
> from Japan and translated into colloquial Chinese (Close to Cantonese
> style)... These have aroused a lot of criticism from mainstream
> educationists in Hong Kong, who see these comics as the main cause of our
> children's "literacy problems".
>
>
I can't give you any help with your original request, however I'd like to
make a comment from my own experience on the above paragraph.
I learnt English when I was 7, when my family moved because of work
related reasons to an English speaking country, India. From what I
remember, comic books played an important part in my learning English.
During the first three or four months I was there I was fairly isolated,
I didn't know anybody and we got there just at the end of the school year.
However I had an unending supply of comic books since a little bookstore
in the hotel where we lived would let me go in everyday and read them for
free.
I think that comic books were a great source of 'interpretable input'.
Everything was highly contextualized: pictures, action, conversational
structure, all helped me to make sense of things that I didn't know. They
also interested me, so I spent hours 'reading' them. By the time
September came around and I started school, I already had acquired some
structure, a number of ready made phrases and a lot of vocabulary ...
through comics.
With this comment I don't mean to say that reading comics is sufficient
and that we should limit or reduce kids' reading to that. I'm saying
that comics are a good genre for learning just because of the contextual
support, kids like them and read them when they don't read other things
willingly (one thing about 'popular culture' is that it IS popular).
Perhaps what we as educators, parents or whatever should do is exploit
the genre, sneaking in vocabulary and so on into X-Men and others so that
kids will learn while they're having fun. Rosa
P.S. One of the first comics I read was Lord Jim in the Classics
Illustrated series. I remembered it disturbed me. I couldn't understand
what was going on. There were deaths portrayed and I didn't know what it
was about. Lord Jim was one of the first books I looked up and read when
I got into college just so I could resolve what had worried me then.
++++++++++++++++++++++
Rosa Graciela Montes
Ciencias del Lenguaje
ICSYH - UAP
Puebla, MEXICO
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