How to teach grammar using comics

Grammar has the unfortunate reputation of being boring, but it doesn’t have to be that way! Using comics to teach grammar is akin to hiding vegetables in other food that a child really likes.

What’s great about “Speak English with Comics” is that the comics can be adapted to all kinds of lesson objectives. Whatever grammar topic is in your curriculum, you can certainly use our comic strips to add some fun to the lesson!

But don’t just take my word for it, here are six examples:

Present continuous

• Ask students a question in the present continuous, and the same verb tense will naturally follow in their answer: What is happening in picture #1? Where is she going? What is she eating?

• If students are still getting the hang of present continuous and/or keep forgetting to use it, give a visual prompt on the whiteboard or with notecards, signs that say something like “She is ____ing” “They are ____ing” and point to these if they forget.

Past continuous and past simple

• Comics show sequences of actions, so this is a great visual aid for learning these two tenses together.

• Example: She was sleeping, and then her dad came into the room.

Excerpt taken from Dilly #5

Zero conditional

• A great post-reading activity that applies the story to the students’ lives

  • If/when you can’t sleep, what do you do?

  • If/when you go on a trip, how do you feel?

  • If/when the weather is hot, what do you wear?

Excerpt from Dilly #5

Prepositions of place

• It’s easy to simply locate where things are in the picture in relation to other things (ie the hamster is on the curtains)

Activity idea: Each picture has a preposition written on it. Ask the students to create a complete sentence about that picture, including the preposition.

Possessives

• This works for the apostrophe s possessive (Dilly’s mom, Cami’s suitcase, Meg and Bree’s dad) as well as possessive pronouns (Her mom has blonde hair. Their mom has black hair.)

Activity idea: compare the two comic strips. For instance, Dilly’s room vs Meg and Bree’s room; or their house, their parents, their clothes, etc, etc)

Adverbs of manner

• Comic characters are very expressive, perfect for adverbs of manner!

  • Did she say that angrily?

  • What did they do quickly?

Activity idea: Match the adverb to the actions in each picture