Comics and EFL teaching

I just thought I'd digitise and post some of the ideas I've used in my lessons over the last few years. It's a shame to think that they lay half-forgotten in some dusty folder when someone might find them useful. Here are some suggestions for using comic strips in order to help students with their writing and speaking skills. Although this partcular strip would work best with B2 levels and above the same ideas could be used with different comics and lower levels.

Lesson Plan

1 Give out the photocopy and ask students to discuss in pairs how the world depicted is different to our own. Elicit answers.

2 Ask students to speculate on what the story is about and who the main characters are.

3 Students then fill in the missing dialogue and discuss their answers in groups.

At this point you could use the exercise as the basis for any number of writing, speaking or even listening activities.

Ask students to perform the dialogue (including sound effects) and record it using a mobile phone/mp3 player/ cassette recorder etc. The class votes on the best performance.

Ask students to write a story which incorporates the dialogue.

Ask students to speculate on what happens next and create their own dialogue.

Ask students to say which actors would be most suitable to play these roles in a movie and why.

Use the Judge Dredd story cassettes/CDs/mp3s and ask them to fill in the missing blanks with the original words.