Using Comics to Promote Complete Sentences

Students love to give a one-word answer, and who can blame them? One word or a short phrase is often enough to get one’s message across. But we know how important it is to be able to use complete sentences even if it’s not always necessary in natural conversation.

I’m going to focus on two primary ways comic strips can assist students in practicing complete sentences.

Describing what they see

The visual nature of comics provides a huge amount of, for lack of a better word, stuff to talk about.

1. Identifying nouns

2. Explaining actions

3. Using interesting and relevant adjectives

4. Using prepositions to explain where things are in relation to each other

On the speaking practice pages you’ll see a speech bubble that contains these prompts:

• I can see…

• There is…

• In the picture…

Telling the story sequentially

Again, because the stories are visual, rather than predetermined words on a page, there are endless possibilities here. There’s just so much that students COULD say, so, as long as they are prompted to use sentences, they won’t struggle with finding ideas.

Here are some possible activities:

• A student tells the story out loud with a required minimum of one sentence per picture.

• Two students tell the story, but each must say different (complete) sentences about every single picture.

• Students must always start their sentences with “After that…” I don’t know why, but students find this really funny

What do I say to encourage (nicely) the use of complete sentences?

1. Make the expectations clear from the very beginning

   In your instructions, either TELL them to use sentences or MODEL sentences for them

2. Repeat the single word they just used, as a question

   “Sofa?”

   Ideally, they will correct themselves

3. Start the sentence for them

   “There is…”

   “I can see…”

   “He…”

4. Sometimes I use a gesture to indicate that I want a long sentence, but you’d have to have this system in place or they won’t understand what you’re miming.

   Here's the ASL sign for "sentence" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZDH1z5p5B0