Integrating comics into English lessons

It is a common view that visuals are effective in enhancing the students' learning process from several aspects. Considering that comics include a series of visuals correlating with each other, which constitute a meaningful whole, it can be quite advantageous to incorporate comics in the language lessons. In this respect, the scope of this study is to present how to design and conduct an English lesson through the use of comic strips and to find out the students' attitudes toward the use of comics in English lessons. To achieve this, a 7-week lesson plan was designed to provide comics and activities, which were prepared according to the objectives of the lesson. This study was hold with 36 fourth grade students at Gazipaşa Primary School in İstanbul, Turkey as an action research. The key aim is to find the answers for the research questions, which are (1) how can I use comic strips in teaching English to young learners? and (2) what are the students' attitudes toward the use of comic strips in the EFL classrooms? Regarding these questions, two different data tools were used. Thus, the teacher kept diaries right after each English lesson throughout 7 weeks. In addition, at the end of each lesson, an interview was conducted with 12 students to acquire more data. As it was a qualitative study, the findings from the data collecting tools were analyzed by inductive data analysis. The findings indicated that comics and the activities, which were arranged according to the objectives of the lesson, the language proficiency level of the students and their needs, were quite effective in terms of increasing the students' reading comprehension and motivation, improving their general and vocabulary knowledge, and increasing the students' communicative competence.