Medieval history through King Arthur comics in English classes
Amanda Amaral Dullius Murilo Ariel de Araújo Quevedo Victoria da Silva Pinto
Much has been discussed about teaching practices, objectives and how much grammar an English class should be made of. The new generations of teachers seem to agree that metalanguage and teaching only grammar should not be the main objective of a good English class and that the learning process is more effective when dealing with authentic materials.
According to Referenciais Curriculares do Rio Grande do Sul (2009), comic books are part of students’ interests and they can be an important tool for teaching an additional language, since they are composed by short texts and present linguistic resources in a contextualized way. Moreover, the work with comic books develops students’ abilities to identify the different elements of the narrative, to make inferences over the relations between verbal and non-verbal texts, to recognize the effects of graphic and linguistic resources in the story, to comprehend and discuss the theme, and to express points of view.
The Project
This proposal is directed to students from the 9th year of Elementary School and it was designed to be applied at a federal school in Rio Grande do Sul. It may and should be adapted by the teacher who wants to use it in class. The project aims at working with the characteristics of comic books and the legends of King Arthur. The students will be presented to the history of King Arthur’s legends and to a series of comic books which tells these stories, as well as the linguistic resources in them. As the final product of this project, we suggest the production of comic books based on some
chapters of the book Os Cavaleiros da Távola Redonda, which the students will work with during the project.
Now, we will show in detail the steps which were elaborated for this project, organized by the sequence of days which was predicted by us, totalling the amount of 16 hour/class for the accomplishment of the project.
• Developing the project
On the first day of project, the teacher has the opportunity to introduce the topic to the students. To start talking about King Arthur, we suggest that, with the students in a circle, the teacher presents an imitation of Excalibur and asks them to guess the theme of the project. After having pointed out that the project involves King Arthur, the group can discuss what they already know about the theme and the teacher can show a scene from the movie Excalibur to contextualize the subject. Also it is possible to ask them some questions, such as:
1 – Who was King Arthur?
2 – Was he real or just a character from legends?
3 – Who were the Knights of the Round Table? Why are they called like that?
For the second class, the idea is to introduce the students to the comic books through the website <issuu.com/webcomicsonline> and ask them to work with one issue of the series.1 Yet, they have to take a first look at the comic, paying attention to the illustrations and trying to come up with the plot of the story, taking notes of their expectations and then they should read it. To guide their analysis, some questions will be given, such as:
1 – What can you tell about the story by just looking at the images? 2 – What do you think the characters are saying in the balloons?
After that, the students are supposed to talk about their expectations about the story they read.
By the third class, the objective is to work with the structure, aspects and characteristics of comic books as a text genre. For this, they can work with the comics they selected in the previous class or other samples brought by the teacher. To guide their analysis, some questions may be handed in, such as:
• Who is the interlocutor of the story? • What is the objective of the comic book? • Where can you find comic books?
• What are the characteristics of the type of language used in comic books?
On the fourth class, the teacher should start discussing linguistic resources such as the structure of the text in comic books, the verb tenses they have noticed in the stories, cohesion and coherence, all this reminding students about the characteristics of comic books discussed in the previous class. The teacher may also bring various types of comics, to show the students and discuss what they have in common.
On the fifth class, they are divided in small groups to read chapters of the book Os Cavaleiros da Távola Redonda, by Thomas Malory, adapted by Ana Maria Machado. After reading their chapters, the students must come up with ideas for the screenplay of their own comic books.
By the sixth and the seventh class the students begin to actually work on their comic book. In each group, some students will be in charge of writing the screenplay, another will draw the scenes e others will start to build their comic book, always being oriented by the teacher.
The last class should be spared for the final considerations regarding the project, self-evaluation and feedback. The comics will circulate among the classmates so that everyone has the chance to take a look at all the works. We suggest that the comic books stay at the school library, being available to the whole school.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
The project we have described shows that through working with comic books we are providing the students with the opportunity to deal with a text genre that is part of their daily lives, with verbal and non-verbal texts, with linguistic resources that are helpful not only to comprehend comic books. In addition this proposal may enhance their abilities of language comprehension and production in many other situations of use, besides their knowledge on a different culture through authentic texts. Our ideas also aim at developing in students a sense of collaborative work and mutual help.
REFERENCES
EXCALIBUR (Excalibur). John Boorman, 1981.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA8MeJFRh04>
ISSUU - Webcomics Online. <http://issuu.com/webcomicsonline>
KING ARTHUR (Rei Artur). Antoine Fuqua, 2004.
KING ARTHUR (IS IT REAL?). National Geographic
Channel.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvVeP99MrFI
MALORY, Thomas. Os cavaleiros da távola redonda. São Paulo: Scipione, 2004. Adaptação de Ana Maria Machado.
RIO GRANDE DO SUL. Secretaria de Estado da Educação, Departamento Pedagógico. Referenciais Curriculares do Rio Grande do Sul: linguagens, códigos e suas tecnologias. Porto Alegre: SE/DP, 2009.
Amanda Amaral Dullius
Graduanda em Letras com ênfase em Língua Inglesa e Literaturas de Língua Inglesa pela Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Possui experiência como professora de Língua Inglesa e atualmente trabalha como redatora.
Murilo Ariel de Araújo Quevedo
Graduando em Letras com ênfase em Língua Portuguesa, Língua Inglesa e Respectivas Literaturas pela Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Atua como monitor no Programa Inglês sem Fronteiras.
Victoria da Silva Pinto
Graduanda em Letras com ênfase em Língua Portuguesa, Língua Inglesa e Respectivas Literaturas pela Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul Possui experiência como professora de Literatura e atualmente atua como bolsista de Iniciação Científica no projeto de pesquisa intitulado “Um país narrado: os Estados Unidos de Érico Veríssimo”, sob orientação da Profª. Drª. Maria da Glória Bordini.
