Learning to Read, Learning to See

The Director of the Centre for Popular Culture, Dr Bidisha Banerjee and Centre member Ms Jessica Lee, have been working on their QEF project “Learning to Read, Learning to See: Using Graphic Novels in the English Language Classroom” which aims to develop Hong Kong English teachers’ pedagogical approaches to visual literacy. As this was part of the CPCH’s larger One City One Book Hong Kong (1C1B) project, the 1C1B book for 2019, Shaun Tan’s wordless graphic novel The Arrival was used as the sample text for this project as well. Students and teachers in all participating schools received a copy of the novel.

Several workshops and demonstration lessons were offered to teachers by an International Visual Literacy Consultant, Ms Esther Shaw in June 2019. The project leaders and Ms Shaw also prepared extensive teaching resources for the participating teachers to adopt in their own classrooms. Ms Lee followed up with the teachers in implementing these materials in their English classes in the new school year. The students then created their own graphic novels based on the theme of migration depicted in The Arrival.

Judging from the responses of the project participants, the project’s goals have been achieved. One of the participating teachers, Ms Linor Hui from Wa Ying College, says, “We were really surprised by what the students discovered. From the very first lesson, students’ interest was raised and their curiosity piqued.”  The project shows that images can be powerful tools for motivating students to learn and apply challenging concepts.

The students also seemed to enjoy reading The Arrival and working on their own wordless stories. Oscar Choi, student of Shatin Tsung Tsin Secondary School says “The book is not so easy for me. I am not good at guessing the deeper meanings of the dragon. But I love it as it will never let me feel bored even though I have read several times some difficult parts”. Raymond Hui, a S2 student at TWGHs Mrs. Fung Wong Fung Ting College, recollected his experience of creating a wordless story with his peers, “It was really good to use pictures as everyone has a different mind and different ideas about them so we can learn new ideas from each other.” Mr Gareth Roberts, a NET teacher at TWGHs Mrs Fung Wong Fung Ting College notes the importance of images in language teaching, “Working with such rich, detailed and intriguing images as Shaun Tan’s work in The Arrival had strong benefits for me as a language teacher. The pictures hooked the students in faster than words alone could have ever hoped to match. After that, fostering the drive for a deeper analysis was easy and students were able to reach higher-order thinking tasks such as identifying connections, contrasts and symbols, in addition to creating their own wordless stories.”

The final visual stories of the students will be showcased on the project website.

Teacher Workshop

Teacher Workshop

Demonstration Lesson

Cover image of wordless story created by students