FINAL
PROJECT of LANGAUGE TEACHING TECHNOLOGY
THE
MAKING OF ENGLISH E-COMIC TO GAIN STUDENTS’
READING HABIT VIA VISUAL ARTS
Swastika
Mahatmarani
22101410045
LTT
405-406
english department
faculty of languages and
arts
semarang state university
2013
1.
TOPIC
THE MAKING OF ENGLISH E-COMIC TO
GAIN STUDENTS’
READING HABIT VIA VISUAL ARTS
2.
BACKGROUND
OF THE TOPIC
Comics
serve sequence of stories in the forms of pictures with interesting package.
Comics are combined with texts which tell the story behind the appropriate
images or photographs. Young learners and intermediate up to high school
learners are those suitable age for learning language through an interesting
package of material that are including the visual aids. Comics include visual
media, so that the making of comic is to be seriously well-illustrated. Global
era and the progressive development of communication and technology encourages
us to find innovative way of presenting good material of language in form of
comics outside its original forms (paper-based form), so that people start to
think of making comics into internet-based comics through e-comic.
This research will investigate students’
learning in English by reading e-comic and their appreciation in doing it. The goal
of introducing e-comic is to invite students to be mentally fond of learning
activity through reading. The impacts students have are their interest in
reading English in various way to gain reading habit.
When teachers do the peer teaching, they
will have made the lesson plan that tells teacher’s scenario in teaching and
learning activities in classroom. Lesson plan is containing material that is
divided into two main contents; content material and language content material.
For some reasons, the language content material (in this case we are going to
use English) is used as the media of presenting the main material, so that
there will be bilingual based learning in understanding the school subjects. For
some reasons, teachers’ explanation is not the only way to get students
comprehension. There will be more refreshing way instead of presenting material
through “paragraph text-books”, then we will find another way of presenting
school’s material while also gain students learning input of English.
The research needs to be done because in
English language learning, especially reading, the process needs to be
continuously developed. E-comic represents texts as much as its images, so that
this will enable students to understand the content of the massages in the text
based on each suitable pictures. Second language learning is provided to build
students to be able to communicate in global era, if not, at least they can
comprehend every English input around their own world. Some lesson books does
not provide good role of the way to present material in unique form, so e-comic
will be an effective way to gain students understanding in both school subject
content material and language-based material.
3.
REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE
TOPIC
The use of e-comic for reading English language is an
interesting one to analyze about. E-comic is considered to invite students all
over the world be ready to emphasize more reading activity. This is observable
that many of students in any stage of education are looking for more
interesting way to comprehend their material in school than conventionally
reading the usual books, listening to the teacher inductively, etc. They find
this boring as inductive learning and academic books stay brings impracticality
of the study method. As the complexity of curriculum, the development of
material, and the different stage of difficulty to different students, e-comic
becomes a “friend” in studying while reading the school’s material and learning
English language. Most schools require their student academic textbooks, and so
the interest of reading may decreasingly happen.
In addition, we as a university level of students are
close to ICT world and its usage and its development very well, so that we are
going to give our argument about the importance of e-comic as one of the effective
way to improve student English learning through reading.
4.
RESEARCH PROBLEM
The
problems I observed in this area of study is that many students who learn
English formally (in schools) are tend to be slower in learning English through
academic books than through the e-comic.
The
research questions are formulated as follows:
How can e-comic give more
impact in gaining students interest in reading in order to learn English as
well as learning school subject material?
5.
REVIEW OF THE RELATED
LITERATURE
In order to support the thesis I have
given, I would like to bring out the theory that support the idea and its
elaboration.
The role of ICT in e-comic for English
language learning for improving the quality of yEnglish language learning and
for increasing the number of successful English language learners, emphasizes
that we are in the middle of multimedia and information and communication
technologies era. As has been said:
According to Carla Arena (Tuesday,
September 27, 2011), providing students to learn English with comic is visually
clean and clear that can give a lot of new phrasal verbs in short bits. She
said that learning English through comic is a fantastic way for providing
students with appealing presentation, so that students can comprehend the
language input in the fun way. Comics also use the daily life language so that
they are easily acceptable to young students.
Beside the language aspect, the other
aspects like the way of life and culture may also internalized to e-comics. E-comics
have a high possibility in introducing the cross cultural knowledge all over
the world to the students who learning it. According to Evelyn Izquierdo, an English
teacher of at Universidad Central de Venezuela and an ICT teacher trainer,
learning English through comics can build fun atmosphere for students. She said:
“ComicsEnglish provides and explains
English comic strips for EFL/ESL learners and teachers. Keep having fun reading
comics while learning English.”
ICT can expand to language programs and
improve the quality of teaching and learning in general. World Wide Web
provides up-to-date materials of the target language, offering learners the
material in different forms by approaching students’ world in illustrative
representation. One idea of the world-wide-web is providing e-comics for
learning English by sequential pictures of a certain themes and stories. One
example of websites that is addressing e-comic for students or teenagers is www.gurl.com.
This website provides many articles containing of themes that teenagers are
facing. The website is not only providing articles but also videos and the one
that the writer is talking about; the e-comics.
As teachers, we should realize that
technology in language plays the very important role through all over the world
in supporting education system.
Let’s take a look at the one of the
impact of e-comic in gaining students’ interest in reading. In monologue
reading, a person starts understanding the text word by word. The method that
readers use can be skimming or scanning. Accuracy is one important factor
needed to be able to reading well. This skill is a rather complicated one; it
needs the process of thinking about structures of meanings and the ability to
understand construction of sentences in the appropriate forms of grammar. In
different reason, understanding the context of material through reading needs
not to be monotonous, for instance the text-based paragraph. The readers need
to imagine in the mind about what is being talked about from the passage.
Sometimes common readers demand for the beauty of the texts they are reading
about. In order to give certain information, the message inside the text should
be clear and easily understood, so that nowadays writers develop the monologue
texts with visual arts. That is where comics come from, illustrated texts which
bring pictures based on their ideas. The production of comic books were
enthusiastically accepted and gain huge profits. One problem may occur, comic
books require money and is limited. To make it easier, safe and easy to load
hundreds of comics, we find e-comic, internet based comic that can be settled
by computer, laptops, i-pads, and other gadgets that support the existence of
the e-comics.
6.
ANALYSIS
The use of e-comic as the media of
improving teaching and learning English language has some advantages that may
become the reasons why e-comic should be continuously developed and remain in
gaining students habit of reading.
The writer analyzes the advantages
of e-comic as below:
·
Make students easier to understand the content material and language
material because e-comic provides illustration that makes it clear to follow.
·
Present suitable image for students working at different levels.
·
E-comic allows students to
enjoy the fancy illustrations without permit them to over-think about imagination
of content material.
·
E-comic is represented in the
form of story that anyone can enjoy.
·
E-comic represents students’
daily life. The theory of school’s material is applied in e-comics in the form
of narrative story, so that it makes them easier to understand the ‘real lesson’
·
E-comic brings messages implied
in the texts beside the images.
·
E-comic brings preventive
warning without insisting readers comfort zone.
·
E-comic brings interesting,
fancy and colourful illustrations that
gains their interest and curiosity.
The followings are samples of e-comic:
Each e-comic is represented in this way:
SUMMARY
E-comic gives the flexibility in reading of
language learning. We analyzed e-comic as a positive impact of gaining students
reading habit in language learning of English. We realize that this article may
not be perfect and still need corrections from the reader in order to improve
its quality in giving readers information.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
·
Information
and Communication Technologies in the Teaching and Learning of Foreign
Languages; State-of-the-art, needs and perspectives-UNESCO-ebook-Moscow:2004
·
www.
gurl.com
