Comic strips provide a unique and exciting way to engage learners in the world of English. Check out these eight tips for making and using them in your classroom.
1) Making comic strips as a group activity
Creating a comic strip is a great group activity. Some learners can write the story, some can draw, and some can colour. Learners should speak in English and work together. Start by teaching them functional phrases like “Can I do the drawings?” and “I’d like to write the story”.
2) Using comic strips to teach vocabulary
If you’ve just given a lesson about shopping, learners can write a comic strip about ‘going to the shops’. If you’ve just taught them to use the future tense, they can write a comic strip about ‘making plans’. Encourage learners to describe what happens in each frame of their comic strip in English. They should make story notes before they start drawing.
3) Creating fun characters
Keep your students engaged by helping them to create interesting characters for their comic strips. Try asking questions about their characters like “Has he got a long or a short nose?”, “Is she wearing a shirt or a jumper?”, and “Is he happy or grumpy?”
Why not ask them to create a ‘character guide’ before drawing their comic strips? This could be a notebook where they design and describe every character using key vocabulary.
4) Drawing and colouring a comic strip
Your learners should begin by drawing the comic strip frames, speech balloons, and characters in pencil. They should then draw over these lines in ink. Afterwards, they should write words in pencil in the speech balloons. You can check these for spelling and grammar before they draw over them in ink. When the ink is dry, learners can erase the pencil lines and colour in the comic strip.
Are your students good with technology? They could also create a comic strip digitally by taking photos and adding speech bubbles with Photoshop!
5) Using comic strips to practice speaking skills
Once your learners have finished creating their comic strips, there are many follow-up activities you can use them for in the classroom. For example, you could ask each group of learners to act out their comic strips in front of the class. Each learner should choose a character and practice saying their lines before performing them with their group. This will help learners practice their speaking skills.
You could also get students to perform this activity with comic strips from a coursebook. If each group changes three words in the strip before they act it out, listening students can play ‘spot the difference’ between the text in the comic strip and the words they hear.
6) Using comic strips as reading tasks
You can use your learners’ comic strips to create a set of unique reading tasks. Ask each group to create a set of true or false questions and comprehension activities to go with their comic strips. Now you can share these out amongst the class, or save them to use later.
7) Creating more activities with comic strips
Your learners can prepare even more skills work and language tasks to go with their comic strips. For example, they can design tasks like ‘Match these six words with their synonyms in the comic strip’ or ‘Find the opposite of these seven words in the comic strip’ or ‘Look at these eight words and find places in the comic to add them’. Groups can then exchange their finished comic strips and tasks.
Why not try using coursebook comic strips to create even more fun activities. Try creating a comprehension task by photocopying a comic strip and cutting out the text from the speech balloons. Now you can give your learners the pictures from the comic strip in the correct order, and the text in a jumbled order. Ask them to match the correct text with the correct pictures and put the story together!
8) Entering the Project Explore Competition
If you like these ideas and want another way to enjoy comic strips in your classroom, try entering The Project Explore Competition!
Engage your learners and win great prizes by asking them to complete the story of The Ancient Statue with their very own comic strip!
Bonjour, I used Addicted to War a comic strip account of USA history, now out of print sadly, I bought it in Paris and used it for young adults learning English… When teaching French there is a plethora of bandes desinees such as Tardi, Sfar, and the donjon series… Very popular!
Good and fun method to work on students skills such as creativity, reading and writing.
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thanks for helpful ideas. I used comic stripes for detective story. My students practised past simple and progressive in their own stories
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I have never read such a successful article before. Really nice blog post. Thanks.