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From http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=123901

Words + Pictures
by Lina Sun

Students can develop language competence and social skills engaging with literary texts of all forms and genres: novels, poetry, drama, films, picture books, comics, and graphic novels. Today, literacy is no longer restricted to the canonical fictional texts but involves visual art forms as well. The New London Group (1996) developed the concept of multiliteracies focusing on different modes of representation. They noted that the visual mode of representation is powerful and closely related to language. Multiliteracies also create a different kind of pedagogy in which “language and other modes of meaning are dynamic representational resources, constantly being remade by their users as they work to achieve their various cultural purposes.”

Research from the past two decades has shown that comics and graphic novels in particular may have a beneficial effect on readers in terms of retaining information, improving basic language skills, fostering comprehension, and interpreting for meaning (Carter, 2008; Gunning, 2005; Kilickaya & Krajka, 2012). These studies suggest that schemata can be stored both verbally and visually, and that the mixing of words and images has a major impact on cognitive psychology and therefore also on language learning (Paivio, 1991).

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