LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 21:2 February 2021
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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The Harmony of the Visual Message and Graphic Narratives in a
Heterogeneous Classroom

Ranim Hajjar, Ph.D. Scholar

Abstract

“Consisting of dissimilar or diverse ingredients or constituents.’’ This is how the word heterogeneous can be best defined. Before we start writing an essay to discuss the topic of the visual message in graphic narratives, we have to fully understand the meaning of the term ‘heterogeneous classroom’. A heterogeneous classroom is where you- as a teacher- have a big number of students who possess different linguistic abilities and different learning styles along with various backgrounds. This research article delves into the meaning of graphic narratives and explains how a visual message accompanying a text has an impact on readers. This impact has triple sides: informing, educating and persuading. Each side is going to be examined closely, separately and with suitable examples that apply to the different kinds of learners.

Keywords: Graphic narratives, visual message, heterogeneous classroom, teaching, learner-type

Introduction

There are three main learning styles for students: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Students with a visual learning style tend to learn and retrieve information best if they see it (a word, a picture, a moving animation, or a written caption under a graph). Auditory students remember most of the information they hear like a song, a pronunciation of a word or a speech. Kinesthetic students on the other hand learn best if they try things by themselves. Acting a role-play or touching items and making models are some of the best ways such students can learn through. We have to bear in mind that some students are audio-visual, and others are visual-kinesthetic. All of these kinds of students found in one classroom will approach English language learning in different ways. Imagine teaching a graphic novel in a class containing all these students!

‘A teacher working in a heterogeneous (mixed-ability) class should adapt the tasks to individual learner needs. Such individualization turns a lesson into a mixed variety of the individual-fit activities and is sometimes described by teachers as impractical.’ (Millrood, 2002). This research article is addressing the idea of the mixed ability classroom from a novel perspective: namely graphic texts. In terms of graphic texts, students have their own different ways in interpreting a text by using their own technical and conceptual resources. Some students will depend on the language by reading the dialogues in the speech bubbles. Some others may understand a graphic text by looking at the drawings and analyzing the body language of the characters. Others may code the movements and sounds of the actors in a graphic film more easily than reading the words in the speech bubbles.

So, what is a graphic text in the first place? This is the question that we need to answer in order to see how students use their resources in order to interpret a graphic text in hand. Graphic texts are a literary medium that has its own devices. It is a printed text accompanied by pictures, graphs, or tables. In his book Understanding Comics (1993), McCloud defined graphic texts as ‘juxtaposed pictorial and other images in a deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and /or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.’ The first work that has been regarded as a graphic text (specifically a graphic novel) was A Contract with God by Will Eisner which was written in 1978.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Ranim Hajjar, Ph.D. Scholar
Jain-Deemed-To-Be-University
Bengaluru, Karnataka 560069, India
h.ranim@jainuniversity.ac.in
+91 7204647062
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