Most all of us are familiar with one form or another of sequential art, a term coined by Will Eisner(1985) to name an art form that has come to include cartoons, comic strips,comic books, and graphic novels. It is an international art form and ranges from an innocent but witty girl called "Mafalda", loved by South Americans, especially "The Rioplatenses", to strong and historical comic characters such as the French Asterix.
Despite its popularity, sequential art has long been misunderstood. After widespread use throughout the first half of the 20th century, comic books in the United States came under attack in the 1950s when psychiatrist Frederic Wertham wrote, in his highly influential "Seduction of the Innocent", that they are a " reinforcing factor in children´s reading disorders" ( 1954).
Despite all this, research by Hanes and Ahrens(1988) highlights the fact that comic books contain a greater number of rare words than ordinary conversation and are thus and excellent stepping stone to more difficult reading. Cary points out that sequential art is rich in ellipses,blends,non-words (uh,huh,humph,sheesh!) and other common aspects of spoken language, exposing students to "the ambiguity, vagueness and downright sloppiness of spoken English". Sequential art is a window on the spoken vernacular, a variety of the target language that is commonly overlooked in efl classes in large part due to its absence in both educational material and in more formal authentic texts. The obvious absence of an informal register from a student´s linguistic repertoire is a key contributing factor to misunderstanding and confusion when students confront a native speaker of English or when they watch a film in English.
Sequential art also provides an up-to-date look at target language culture and society. As an art form that is kept current by active publishing houses, newspapers,and the Internet, it is a widely accesible source of popular topics, concerns, and fashions that can interest almost any age level. And as most comic involve a number of characters from different backgrounds interacting over a long period of time, they can serve as a tool for studying socio-cultural aspects of people,allowing a teacher to design a lesson based solely on cross-cultural differences and similarities between the target language culture and the students´native culture.
from English Teaching Forum, Number 3 ,2007
Despite its popularity, sequential art has long been misunderstood. After widespread use throughout the first half of the 20th century, comic books in the United States came under attack in the 1950s when psychiatrist Frederic Wertham wrote, in his highly influential "Seduction of the Innocent", that they are a " reinforcing factor in children´s reading disorders" ( 1954).
Despite all this, research by Hanes and Ahrens(1988) highlights the fact that comic books contain a greater number of rare words than ordinary conversation and are thus and excellent stepping stone to more difficult reading. Cary points out that sequential art is rich in ellipses,blends,non-words (uh,huh,humph,sheesh!) and other common aspects of spoken language, exposing students to "the ambiguity, vagueness and downright sloppiness of spoken English". Sequential art is a window on the spoken vernacular, a variety of the target language that is commonly overlooked in efl classes in large part due to its absence in both educational material and in more formal authentic texts. The obvious absence of an informal register from a student´s linguistic repertoire is a key contributing factor to misunderstanding and confusion when students confront a native speaker of English or when they watch a film in English.
Sequential art also provides an up-to-date look at target language culture and society. As an art form that is kept current by active publishing houses, newspapers,and the Internet, it is a widely accesible source of popular topics, concerns, and fashions that can interest almost any age level. And as most comic involve a number of characters from different backgrounds interacting over a long period of time, they can serve as a tool for studying socio-cultural aspects of people,allowing a teacher to design a lesson based solely on cross-cultural differences and similarities between the target language culture and the students´native culture.
from English Teaching Forum, Number 3 ,2007
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