Cartoons
Writing a cartoon can be as linguistically simple or complex as the task (or the teacher/student) requires. What might appear a childlike and playful task can end up a rigorous drill in the finer grammar points of a language.
Cartoons help with grammar
When you read a traditional comic in any language, you are faced with a wide range of grammar. These are just some of the obvious grammar uses:
- Third person
- Reported speech
- Past tense (although present can normally suffice, making the whole task accessible to the youngest of learners)
- Imperative.
Software
If you are a Mac user, you can buy Comic Life software from Plasq. Windows PC users can download Photo Story 3 from Microsoft.
Comic Life
Partners in Excellence makes use of Comic Life, software for the Apple Mac, to give students the chance to build comic strips. Check out the Comic Life website to see the effects for yourself.
How does it work?
Students work out a story and sketch out a rough storyboard – frame by frame – showing which photos will be taken and roughly what the written text will be. Digital photographs taken by and with the students make the basis for the images, along with speech bubbles, 'POWs' and descriptive captions from Comic Life’s library. Finally, the text is added and the strips are printed.
Eyewitness
Pupils working with Dorothy Johnstone from St Peter’s Primary School in Edinburgh collaborated to plan and design scripts and settings for a series of film shorts they were going to make. They had the help of the IT support officer, class teacher and secondary languages teacher. The storyboard was, in fact, a comic strip in its own right, but the pupils and teacher went one stage further and also filmed the action in digital video.
Microsoft Photo Story 3 for Windows
This new software is a free tool for making photo stories. It allows you to choose your favorite photos on the computer or from online photo-service collections, and then drops them onto a storyboard so that you can quickly organise them into your own personal storybook. Photo editing software is also included, to enable you to crop, rotate, correct colour and lighting and remove red-eye effects.
You can download Photo Story 3 from Microsoft's website.
Read about modern languages teacher Joe Dale's experiences of using Photostory 3 in the classroom on the ICT blog from the TES.
What are the benefits of making cartoons?
Even without comic-making software, much value can be gained from letting pupils visualise spoken role-plays in writing with images. Photos can be taken with digital still cameras, printed out and cut into comic pane proportions. Computer image software (e.g. iPhoto, Microsoft Word) can also be used to crop the images before you print them out, leading to less waste and a more professional result.
Where can I find pictures?
You don’t even need to use pictures taken by students. Using an image search on the internet, other images can be found to fit in where props or the classroom environment would not be suitable. For example, landscapes, food and drink, outdoor scenes and much more can all be found in the MFLE Image bank or via sites such as Google Image Search, Bubbleshare (which allows your students to add 30 second audio descriptions to images) or Flickr.
Speech bubbles can be created very easily with Microsoft Word’s Autoshapes and can be printed, ready for students to complete them with text and stick on top of the photos.
These Word documents show how simple the process can be:
Word document: Example 1 of how to make a comic in Word (2.2 MB)Top Tips
- Get permission from parents to take digital photographs of children in or outside the classroom.
- Overacting works best – consider some of the photo stories in teenage magazines and get pupils to aim for facial expressions and lots of 'catalogue poses'. Maybe get students to bring in the teen magazines they read which contain such photo stories.
- Decide a basic theme for students to work on (at the restaurant, at the campsite, etc.) but get students to come up with a twist in the tale. Encourage them to work out language that does not normally feature in speaking tests.
- Get students to bring in props that might help make their photo story more interesting (wigs, plastic plates and cups, make-up, sports equipment, etc.).
- Use the photo stories – these make great revision resources for speaking and writing assessments. Make sure that students have access to their own stories and those of their classmates. Make time for students to read each other’s comics and note new vocabulary from them.