MAKE BELIEFS COMIX! is a great site to make your own comics. I have used it to practice different grammatical structures in a contextualized way. This site is great because there are several different characters with different facial expressions you can choose from, and also a variety of thinking and talking boxes. It is free and you can make comics in English and Spanish.
I realized the utility of this website after a day of trying to present substitution exercises in my class. (These are exercises in which there is a pre-made dialogue and the students just substitute in different vocabulary or phrases. I know they are generally looked down on and probably remind teachers too much of the audiolingual method, but I thought in limited amounts, it could help students automatize formulaic phrases while practicing vocabulary.) I thought these activities would be relatively simple because I had done them so often in my language classes. But I did not realize that if you were not used to the format, it is confusing what you are supposed to do and why you are having the conversation in the first place. After a very difficult class trying to explain a substitution drill, I decided to try comics. Comics provided a clear context and fun visuals. I think it was a much more successful and helpful activity than the drills.
Using commics is a great idea! Yes, especially for grammar practice, I bet it will be awesome. First, I wondered how choosing different facial expressoins would work out, but when I looked at the site, it was pretty simple and easy to use. There are quite many characters and each character has several emotions. Great.
ResponderEliminarThis post gave me some good ideas. I can't believe I never used comics as a teaching tool in Japan! My students were all obsessed with comics - I'm sure they would have loved an activity that revolved around them. If you didn't need to teach anything specific, it would be easy to create a comic with blank thought bubbles and have the students fill in their own dialogue. Or, if you wanted to teach something specific like emotions, you could give characters very expressive faces and again ask students to create their own dialogue using the new vocabulary.
ResponderEliminarI was just looking at Betsy's resource on making movies and found it so amazing. But, I was a little disappointed to think that I may not be able to use it in my context, since that level of technology may be a little challenging to use for some of my learners. But, this site gives me hope!It seems so simple and easy to use. And, the best part is that you can actually print the comic strip! So, even the teacher can create a strip and hand it out to her students and ask them to provide the dialogues. This is great!
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