The use of images has been a long established practice in language teaching.  During the last year I have been experimenting with the use of online comics as a part of teaching Hindi and found that it has had very beneficial learning outcomes. In this report on practice, I shall show how I am using comics in order to promote student engagement with dialogues where the dialogue is initially presented without text but through images and sounds. In an initial attempt at understanding how comics help in language teaching I shall also explore how theorists who work on comics characterise the notion of ‘closure’ as described by Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics (1994), which refers to how viewers provide links between different panels in a comic and a possible parallel with the notion of an ‘information gap’ in communicative language teaching. By showing examples of how the use of comics and images can help to convey concepts in a non-verbal manner and how conceiving of a dialogue as a comic storyboard helps in creating meaningful dialogues I will argue that there are exciting possibilities that we may be able to explore for foreign language teaching. Finally, I shall also point out that however haphazard our comics maybe, they also add an aspect of student engagement, which clearly helps when trying to motivate students in their language studies.

This forum is jointly coordinated by the College of Arts & Social Sciences (the School of Literature, Languages & Linguistics and the Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies) and the College of Asia & the Pacific (the School of Culture, History & Language).

For more information, contact:
Ms France Meyer (CAIS, CASS)                                                                    
E france.meyer@anu.edu.au