Comic Books Improve Early Childhood Literacy 127
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that Professor Carol Tilley, a professor of library and information science at the University of Illinois, says that comics are just as sophisticated as other forms of reading, children benefit from reading them at least as much as they do from reading other kinds of books, and that there is evidence that comics increase children's vocabulary and instill a love of reading. 'A lot of the criticism of comics and comic books come from people who think that kids are just looking at the pictures and not putting them together with the words,' says Tilley. 'But you could easily make some of the same criticisms of picture books – that kids are just looking at pictures, and not at the words.' Tilley says that some of the condescension toward comics as a medium may come from the connotations that the name itself evokes but that the distinct comic book aesthetic — frames, thought and speech bubbles, motion lines, to name a few — has been co-opted by children's books, creating a hybrid format."
No doubt. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ha! (Score:5, Interesting)
What a coincidence. I was just thinking about my dad -- ordinarily a highly intelligent person -- and how he once told me how disappointed he was that I was reading comics, because "I'd forget how to read real books," or some such nonsense. (I was probably about 14 at the time -- a crucial time of life, apparently, when the danger of literary alopecia lurks around every corner.)
What pop seemed to have forgotten was that a large part of the reason why I was reading three or four grades ahead of my class when I first started school was because A.) I had seen the movie Star Wars, and B.) that meant I needed to immerse myself in every Star Wars thing I could possibly get my hands on, especially including comic books.
Remember, there was no way to just watch your favorite movie at home in those days. One of the main ways to get my daily fix of the Force was to revisit the saga in comic book form. And it turns out this was actually a very efficient way to learn how to read. Consider: Having seen the movie in the theater about seven times already, I had pretty much memorized all the lines. The dialogue in the comic books wasn't exactly the same, but before long I could easily follow along with the simple lines and expository captions.
These days I'm revisiting the same trick, reading Franco-Belgian graphic albums as a booster for studying French. My brain is far less able to pick up languages these days than when I was a kid, but the same rules apply with modern French comics as with those Star Wars comics from the 70s, for the most part. The things characters say aren't usually all that complex, and the pictures often give you a hint as to what they might be saying. You can even pick up idioms and colloquialisms that you might not normally be exposed to by a textbook.
I'm glad to see someone's actually doing the research, though. It's probably the only way you would ever convince my dad.
Re:Also foreign language learning. . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
I always enjoyed reading the comics as a kid. I'd have to say Calvin and Hobbes was the best. Nothing like a big cardboard box being so many different things when left to your imagination.
Other languages, too (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone above mentioned Spanish, but I've been using 'comic books' to help learn Japanese. Regular books are -far- too hard yet, but I could puzzle my way through an easy manga (japanese comic book) months ago now. Now I'm up to early teen mangas and still getting better. Yes, my goal is to eventually read any book I can lay my hands on, but there's no doubt in my mind that manga have made it far, far easier to learn Japanese.
I see no reason this wouldn't be the same for English as well. Yes, there may be some reluctance from the child when moving from comics to real books, but if they already enjoy reading when it comes time for that, it'll be easier.
Back in the day, comic books were EVIL! (Score:3, Interesting)
Yah. I remember, as a kid in Orange, California in the late 50s - mid 60s, the unanimous line from parents and teachers about how comics would rot your brain and keep you from ever reading "real" books.
Funny thing: me and my comics-reading, comics-trading buddies all grew up to love reading. We graduated from comics to adult (not meant in the porn sense, you dirty-minded pervert) books earlier than most of our peers, and still, in our 50s, tend to read more than most people.
Go figure!
Re:No doubt. (Score:3, Interesting)
Such insight.
Your brilliant hindsight is a common flaw of youth. Displaying great wisdom when you have few facts and only one chance to do the right thing is harder than simply passing judgement on decisions made before you were born.
You'll see. Your grandchildren's generation will call you to task for missing the obvious solutions.
Time makes fools of everyone.
Re:Also foreign language learning. . . (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ha! (Score:1, Interesting)
I was reading well when I was four years old, almost exclusively because I had my grandmother read comics to me. I got to know them well enough that I started correcting her when she made a mistake, so she quit and told me to read them myself. One evening at dinner I saw something in the newspaper and started reading it; Dad asked what I thought I was doing, and Mom said I was reading. Dad, said something along the lines of, show me how you read, thinking I could not. So I read it to him and it floored him; he didn't know. When I was five, I helped my six-year-old neighbor by reading to him from comics, and he went back to 2nd grade reading after leaving 1st grade unable to. The teachers were pretty surprised, especially when they found out why. So let your kid read comics or anything they can get ahold of short of playboy and the like. Start 'em out right...
For my son it was the BBC.. (Score:3, Interesting)
My son didn't have cartoons, but he got addicted to a BBC programme called "Words & pictures" [bbc.co.uk] which was shown every morning (and we ended up religiously taping). This starts with describing letters ("e" - "eel, egg") and then draws them very explicitly on a whiteboard with a "magic marker" ("straight across and rouuund"), and the series gradually moves into paired characters and then eventually words. This interest started at age 2.5 or so, and after a totally worn out video recorder (for seeing things again), a mountain of scrapbooks (at first, one character was enough to fill a page) and half a paycheck on whiteboard markers (until we found the liquid filled ones that don't dry out) he was writing and reading at age 3.5. I had not realised he picked up pre-reading as well until I asked him to read ME a story, and it was too fluent for him to read that word by word. A few years later I noticed him speed reading as well, he seems to follow the diagonal method.
All we did was give him the opportunity, the exposure. No pressure, just help if it didn't work or learning how to hold a pen properly and how to make letters the same size when fine motoric skills were up to it. I must admit I was a bit worried about how deep he got into this - on holidays, all it took was a pen and a notepad to keep him from getting bored. He seems to have my affinity for fast pattern recognition, maybe that helped - I remember having to slow him down so he switched from reading the words to understanding the sentence and its content.
At his school there was another girl who'd done exactly the same, so they ended up reading the story of the nativity play that year together.
Personally, if the BBC would put that series out on DVDs I would recommend this to any parent. Kids seem to pick things up at warp speed when they're ready for it and interested, just don't try to force it (especially when they're little - they will go to school soon enough). Most of the time exposing them to as many different things as possible and having fun with it is enough - if something resonates you'll know soon.
Thank you BBC.
The real reason teachers don't like comics. (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to read American comics when I was a little kid, today I have a masters in English Literature.
I really find it hard to hate comics... although a broadly agree that about 98 percent of what is published is crap and nonsense. Sure it's functionally literate nonsense, but really, this is no different to all mainstream publishing.
Both bad comics and bad books are good a creating functionally literate people if that is all you really want. I suspect quantity of action, which rises as a child finds material that engages them is the most important factor in creating literate abilities needed within a information culture. Trust me... comics more than surpass this.
Educationalists’ will package reading as a recreation because unlike food, a lot of crap will not damage a child's literacy.
Although it may damage their taste.
The problem could be that an illiterate child can enjoy a comic without reading it... well not reading the text at least.
I suspect the problem (insecurity) for educationalist is in grading a comic at reading levels, which would be practically impossible.
I picked up a French Tin Tin book (in a second hand shop) and enjoyed for about 15 minutes it in a way that undetectable to any one who could not know that I have very very poor reading skills in French. Such a situation if unthinkable in classroom.
Re:Also foreign language learning. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Not particularly. Asterix at its best has jokes for everyone. (And spotting the puns is good fun for french students!)