Graphic Novels: alternative ways to better reading comprehension.

Before I started reading American Born Chinese, I was skeptical as to how much it could make an impact on learning for better reading comprehension skills.  I think I was a little biased in that respect because I never read a graphic novel or comic book before.  But let me say this, I was surprised how much fun I had reading American Born Chinese!  I opened the book and didn’t put it down until I was finished – I was that engaged!  I thought that even though the book was not covered head-to-toe with text, the pictures were able to convey meaning that was probably more effective than what text alone could have provided.  For instance, I thought the play-by-play truth-unveiling of Danny really being Jin Wang all along spoke volumes.  In addition to that, when the Monkey King thought he escaped the “reach” of his creator, Tze-Yo-Tzuh, and reached the five pillars of gold only to realize they were the fingers of Tze-Yo-Tzuh himself, it communicated more meaning through the visual depictions than I think could be transmitted through language – I’m not sure about that, but I found it highly effective.a

Afterwards, when reading Wilhelm, I discovered just how important these graphic novels and such could function in the classroom, especially when faced with the dilemma like Wilhelm had dealt with.  For ESL students and DL’ers, these devices could function as a way to bridge the gap between their struggle and where they ought to be.  Obviously for Kae, the foreign student, she could derive greater knowledge from the pictures alone than she could the semantics of the sentence.  However, this is not to say the text was obsolete in her ability to gain knowledge, but rather, the pictures served as a medium for grasping the language better.  Wilhelm could attest to this as well, where language failed him in his German speaking graphic novels, he could fill in the gaps with the use of pictures. 

As we could see, all the effort of acquiring graphic novels to give to our students would not be done in vain.  The article “Using Graphic Novels, Anime, and the Internet in an Urban High School,” cites several benefits of their use.  The way students can look at a picture and have their own interpreted meaning started getting these students to write better because it allowed them to put forth their own opinion on what happens between the “gutter,” or after the a picture ends on a vague note that allows for several interpretations, thus allowing for the students to think outside of what they see/read concretely.  This method was especially useful for Wilhelm’s students Tommy and Walter, who just needed the tools to build the foundation for reading.  They couldn’t visualize anything when reading, allowing for a very dull, uninspired reading of anything.  But when the students had pictures to complement the reading, the pictures allowed for Tommy, Walter, and Kae to begin visualizing what they read, and therefore begin thinking abstractly by what was not provided in the reading.  Whether through the use of Symbolic Reading Interpretations or Graphic novels, the ability to imagine and see something through our own configuration proves essential.

Like Wilhelm and the authors of the other article, Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher, we should be expected to reach out to our students and find a way that can serve them efficiently.  If our students aren’t grasping a particular passage or overall theme in a story, we need to reconsider how we are presenting the material.  I think by affording students the opportunity to read graphic novels, we can start to bridge the gap between what is presented by the text and what that transitions to in our mind by the visualizing it.  Thereafter, we can take on a larger project, like a completely text-filled novel, since the students are already becoming accustomed to transferring the textual data in the story to symbolic representations in the mind.  And lastly, as always, we should know our students on personal basis that allows for us to identify their strengths and weaknesses to better access how we should approach presenting the material.  What if Wilhelm had not been observant and had not observed Walter reading Calvin and Hobbes? He probably never would have predicted that he learns best by having pictures provided with the words.  And if it came down to how we presented the material to a child which could make all the difference whether he/she came out of the class with something, I think we would be crushed to know only a slight tweak in our teaching could have been what saved that student.