Educational benefits of the Comics medium:

For years, it has been a misconception that comic books cannot help children improve reading skills. Because comics are mostly pictures and graphics, people think that it doesn’t equate to reading at all. However, recent studies show that there are many benefits in reading comic books and graphic novels.

Comic books are simplified versions of narratives, which mean that this could provide solution to a child’s reluctance to reading books. Today, children have short attention span that it is best to incorporate varied teaching approaches to facilitate learning. One varied approach is to include comics in education. To give an idea on how useful they can be, here are six advantages of reading comic books:

1. Increased vocabulary

One reason why comic books are good for learning is because it increases vocabulary. Comics solidify a meaning of a word because pictures support meaning to words. With inference, faster learning of concepts gives more time to learn other words as well.

2. Widen imagination

Pictures are useful in telling stories, but what is not seen in the picture is what develops a child’s imagination. Also, most graphic artists today grew up reading comic books. We won’t know if your child has an interest in comic book art or drawing if you don’t introduce them to comics.

4. Gain interest in reading

Comic books have the same elements as other narratives—characters, plot with conflict and resolution, setting, symbolism, theme, point of view, and others. DC comic books, for example, have interconnected storylines and parallel worlds that if you try to read about them all, your head will explode. On the other hand, Marvel comic books give more emphasis on character development of each superhero.

5. Improve inferencing skills

Inferencing is to read between the lines of a given text. It helps in improving comprehension. Comic books help children understand a concept better because contexts can be visualised. A wall of words doesn’t provide the same kind of luxury as that of a comic book.

6. Values teaching

Comic books are easily taken as unhelpful for kids because of the fanciness and the colours. ………….

 What most people don’t see is that comic books also teach positive messages, like helping others, doing one’s best, working as a team, and persevering. For example, Batman encourages normal people to be heroes in their own pace. Superman reminds us that there is always a way to overcome weakness. Daredevil proves that disability is not a hindrance to life. Spiderman gives motivation to those who felt grief.and inspire to do better and good.

Students follow story beginnings and endings, plot, characters, time and setting, sequencing without needing sophisticated word decoding skills. Images support the text and give students significant contextual clues to word meaning. Comics can act as a scaffold to student understanding.