CREOLIZED TEXTS AS A WAY TO CREATE MOTIVATION
Алексеева А.В., Туралинова А.Б.
Северо-Казахстанский государственный университет им. М. Козыбаева,
г. Петропавловск
Elvenbride@inbox.ru
Everyone studying English has his own reason for learning the language. It is important to keep motivated when learning a language. Motivation is probably the most frequently used catch-all term for explaining the success or failure of virtually any complex task. It is easy to assume that success in any task is due simply to the fact that someone is “motivated”.
Motivation has been defined in different ways: it is what makes us act; it is a desire to work towards a goal or to reach an objective. If motivation is present, learning can be facilitated; but without it, effective learning becomes difficult. Motivation is the key to all learning. Lack of motivation is perhaps the biggest obstacle faced by teachers, counselors, school administrators, and parents. Behavioral problems in the classroom often, or always, seem to be linked to the lack of motivation. Intelligent students are often out-performed by less bright students with high motivation. If a child is motivated enough he/she can accomplish learning of any scale.
Every student has his motives for learning English as a foreign language. So it is necessary to find out what drives that student forward.
Students differ from the way they are motivated, there are those poorly motivated students and there are those highly motivated. Highly motivated students actively participate in the class activities. They procure over additional references, curiously examining, volunteer to any works, and their facial expressions often show satisfaction over an award.
On the other hand, poorly motivated students stock to the seat during a class discussion. They looked uninterested in their facial expressions. They tend to bother others rather than to listen. They cannot simply follow simple instruction that was given and they often leave the learning task undone.
As it concerns teachers it is necessary for them to use techniques to keep students motivated:
1. use visual stimuli at the lessons;
2. encourage the students;
3. reward students for doing a good job in class;
4. be as creative as possible and make learning a fun experience for the students.
To our mind, creolized texts are visual stimuli which help the teachers make their lessons creative, interesting and unusual.
Creolized texts consist of many of the mentioned elements: interesting content, the novelty element, the fantasy element. Thus, creolized texts help to raise students’ interest to the task, helps to eliminate boredom at the lessons, using students’ imagination for creating stories.
Modern researchers of creolized texts indicate that the interest in “visual information” has quickened for the last years.
Creolized texts are much easier to understand. They contain information which is expressed by pictures or images. Many information texts use visual elements.
Voroshilova M. defines creolized text as a text, where different semiotic systems are used – like words, pictures, sounds are melted in one unity and the meaning of each component is important for the meaning of the whole, i.e. they don’t repeat each other 1, р.182.
Creolized texts have the following advantages:
1. visual texts are accessible to all readers;
2. visual texts are complex, multilayered texts;
3. visual texts communicate certain information more clearly than verbal
texts;
4. visual texts are widely used in the electronic media;
5. visual texts can help with comprehension 2.
6. Speaking about comics as a kind of visual texts we can mention advantages of its using at English language lessons.
Jacobs Dale considers that:
1. Reading comics involves a complex, multimodal literacy; and
2. by using comics in our classrooms we can help students develop as critical and engaged readers of multimodal texts [3, p.19].
The use of comics in education is based on the concept of creating engagement and motivation for students.
It has been noted that the use of a narrative form such as a comic «can foster pupils’ interest in science and help students remember what they have learnt and providing a means of fostering discussion. However, it has also been noted that many educators remain “ambivalent” about the use of comic books as an educational tool. Comics have also been used as a medium to communicate health care information on subjects such as diabetes.
Students used to consider grammar a “boring” topic in English class and they often dread learning new grammar points or practicing what they have already learned. A great way to surprise them in a favorable way is to use a comic strip to do this.
When presenting a new grammar point, the teacher must make sure that the use is very clear through the context of the comic strip. The teacher should avoid using a comic strip that has the new grammar point as part of the punchline, since comprehension of the grammar point is tied to understanding the punchline and it could become too difficult for the students. On the other hand, if the grammar point or structure is in fact part of the punchline or even is the key part of the punchline, the comic strip becomes a perfect tool to practice this particular grammar point once your students have already understood it completely.
When the teacher uses the comic strip to present new grammar, he should highlight it and use eliciting questions to lead the students to understand its meaning and use. If, on the other hand, he uses the comic strip to practice the grammar point, he can blank it out or ask more challenging comprehension questions about its meaning and use in the comic strip.
Comic strips are concise and to the point by nature, thus they can be used to introduce a discussion for a speaking class in a direct, yet creative way.
As comics are almost always based on dialogue, they are an excellent source of vocabulary that is used frequently. Also, they often include many idiomatic expressions. The images in comic strips can often provide a reliable context for students to infer the meaning of the new vocabulary words.
The tasks to the comics can vary a lot depending on its purpose if it is used to exercise grammar or vocabulary at the lesson:
1. to guess the ending of the story or its beginning;
2. to find all the irregular verbs and to give their first forms;
3. to define all the tense-forms;
4. to put all the phrases into Indirect Speech;
5. to retell the story from the part of the girl (the man) etc.
Pic. 1 – Example of creolized text
All texts containing nonverbal elements belong to the group of creolized texts. Among them are: advertisement, comics, different kinds of posters, instructions, texts with scientific terminology.
Reading comics is a great way to learn a language. Comics are usually short stories, quick to read and easy to understand.
There are many activities which can be done with comics.
Anything which can be done with written text can be also done with comics. In digital format they are simple to download, display and manipulate. The teacher can:
— get students to read them as homework and answer some questions;
— ask students to read the first part of a story and then guess or write the ending; — blank out some of the words and ask students to fill them in.
But there are some possible negatives the teacher may meet teaching English through comics:
— not everyone likes comics and some students might see reading comics as a game and not at all serious.
— some of the comics you can download contain a large amount of violence and sometimes sex, this isn’t appropriate for many students and teachers need to be careful about what they ask students to read.
Teaching English through comics contains a series of activities based on comic strips and cartoons. These activities may be used in class for various purposes, adding humor to the lessons and creating an environment that is conducive to learning.
Comics are a visual medium used to express ideas via images, often combined with text or visual information.
The most detailed observation of types of comics is the following: alternative, business, children’s, Christian, comic book series, comic strips, drama comics, fantasy comics, graphic novels, history comics, horror comics, humor comics, Manga comics, Marvel comics, Medieval comics, new comics, non fiction comics, old comics, superhero comics, Webcomics and others [4].
Creolized texts are very effective in teaching English, because they improve and increase motivation of the students to study foreign language. It is well-known that the main objective of the media is to influence the motivational and behavioral sphere of the audience, to form its new set of values, to change principles of perception the world by man.
Since comics are man-made constructs, their classification can be modified and argued without any certainty or definitive position as long as the classification scheme used can be defended.
The teacher should use such comics that can interest students, motivate them to study the language, and mainly vocabulary or grammar.
Литература:
1. Ворошилова М. Б. Креолизованный текст: аспекты изучения.
Политическая лингвистика. — Вып. 20. — Екатеринбург, 2006. — С.180-189.
2. http://www.2-clicks-comics.com l5.03.14
3. Jacobs, Dale. “More Than Words: Comics as a Means of Teaching Multiple Literacies”. English Journal. (2007).
4. http://www.2-clicks-comics.com/guide/types-of-comics.html 12.03.14