How to Use Cartoons in the EFL Classroom1

8/18/2019 How to Use Cartoons in the EFL Classroom1

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importance. The result is that English learners, particularly in EFL situations, have little or no

experience in listening to the higher frequencies of children's voices.

Other than children, animals and other imagined creatures also populate cartoons. What kinds of

voices should they have? Generally, smaller animals are given higher, more child-like voices,

whereas larger creatures are given lower, louder voices. Other features of intonation and voice

quality are added to make characters sound big and dumb, big and scary, big and wise, small and

helpless, and so on. Again the nonnative speaker has little experience with comprehending theseunnatural-sounding voices, although more and more we are exposed to artificial-sounding,

electronically-produced voices from elevators, computers, and other technological devices.

Exaggerated Speech Features. The speech of these cartoon creatures, including futuristic

humans and robots, may be given particular features (e.g., lisping, stammering, hesitations) or

geographical dialects to indicate something of the personality of the character. These paralinguistic

features are based on stereotypes the native-speaking society has about the speech of certain types

of people, and these characteristics are transferred to the animals. Native speakers recognize the

stereotypes without even applying conscious thought: for example, a lisping male may indicate

effeminate behavior, a slow Southern dialect may be used to indicate laziness and/or less than

average intelligence, a New York City accent may be used to portray a con man or wiseguy. Nonnative speakers will most likely not recognize the added message or may interpret it

according to the norms of their own culture. The two cultures may not share the same interpretation

of the paralinguistic features.

Thus the nonnative speaker has to deal with the strange-sounding voices of animated creatures and

even of adult characters. For those cartoons in which the main characters are children and the world

of children is portrayed, adults are outsiders and their voices are meant to sound unnatural. In

the Peanuts cartoons, adults never speak in recognizable words; they are sounds emanating from an

unseen source from the telephone or from the teacher or parent who is never seen on screen. In

cartoons where adult characters have main roles (for example, The Simpsons), they may sound like

slightly over-zealous adults (e.g., Homer Simpson's booming voice) or have voice qualities that

some humans normally have but taken in cartoons to extremes (e.g., Marge Simpson's grating

voice).

Positive Features

Appeal to the Child in Us. For most of us, children and adults alike, cartoons are

appealing. We feel we are entering a dream, a fantasy world, and that we are escaping from

everyday reality. Cartoons are colorful and amusing. They are pure pleasure. Although older folks

may prefer Mickey Mouse or Cinderella over the more modern space war types younger people

seem to like, they are still entertainment that we enjoy. Therefore, if we teachers want to use acartoon or part of one as a stimulus for some language activity in the classroom, we already have

the students' willing attention. Even with students whose native language is English, using

animated versions of well-known stories can give the more unwilling students their first exposure to

literary classics and perhaps even stimulate them to pick up the book.



Story Line. Cartoons usually tell a simple story that is easy to

follow. Often the good character is pitted against the badcharacter of the forces of evil, and the good always conquers

the bad. Because of the length of the typical cartoon, about 5minutes, the story cannot get too complicated. Even the 20 - 25

minute cartoon story usually has a simple plot that can be

exploited for classroom use, particularly if it is broken downinto scenes. The full-length is too long to show at one sitting;

our job is not to entertain students but to give them

opportunities to use and improve their English. If we have acartoon film we especially like, we can use our favorite scene or two to spark some

language activities in class, then let the students watch the rest on their own time in thelab if they are interested. We could really get their interest if we ended on a cliff-hanger,

a point of suspense.

Language. Although some animated programs, such as full-length films and some TV

programs like The Simpsons, are aimed also at an adult audience, most shorter cartoons,the kind shown on Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons, are aimed atchildren. The child or creature characters talk in a language the children

understand. They use contractions, elisions, children's vocabulary, and slangterms. These features, in addition to the strange voices, add to the language learner's

burden, but they also provide an excellent opportunity for exposure to slang, ordinary

street terms, and children's language.

Culture. Many cartoons are particularly rich in cultural content. For example, we maysee children considering whether to do something that their parents or teachers would

not approve of; the children already know what is and is not permitted in their culture.Or we may see children interacting in school and compare whether they behave the same

way as in our students' native culture. Better quality cartoons have a moral or teach alesson, such as "cheating on a test is wrong" or "if you cheat you will not only be

punished, but you will hurt others, too." Programs like The Simpsons, aimed at adults,

deal with social and moral issues in a humorous yet thought-provoking way; in one

episode Marge's successful crusade against cartoon violence also resulted in a ban onshowing a famous nude statue at the local museum and brought her into conflict with the

American First Amendment right of freedom of speech.

Choosing a Cartoon to Use in Class

Theme. The most obvious reason for using a cartoon in class is our desire to utilize its content to

teach about a topic. Good cartoons tell a story and have a moral or lesson to teach. Longer

cartoons such asThe Simpsons often present topical issues such as TV violence versus censorship or

the illegal reception of cable TV, so, like other genres, the video can be part of a set of materials on

a topic. A pointless cartoon or the usual mouse-outsmarts-cat variety probably does not have

enough intelligence to come to school.

Language. Despite silent viewing for prediction or dialogue activities, we usually use a video for

its language to provide students with listening input. Some cartoons contain mostly action and have

very little dialogue. Others contain too many strange voices combined with sound effects that

further obscure clarity.



It is probably wise to choose the more simple, old-fashioned type of cartoon, the kind that portrays

small children (or animals) talking with one another. Because the story is usually calmer (few, if

any, fights or chases), the characters talk more slowly and without the quality of excited voice (the

use of an unusually high pitch). It is also more likely that in this type of cartoon, the characters will

be made to speak more like the way ordinary children do speak to one another. The Charlie

Brown/Peanuts cartoons are very good examples of this more old-fashioned type. As an added

benefit, these stories have very little violence an are so cute and innocent that they offend no one.

Activities2

Good teachers always spend some time introducing the topic of the lesson. Often our pre-teaching

activities bear a relationship to our purpose for using the materials. For example, when we use a

cartoon as part of a unit on a particular topic, such as the Halloween holiday, the cartoon may be

only one of a series of materials illustrating various aspects of that topic.

Cloze. Because the language of cartoons is rather unnatural, students need some extra help in

comprehending it. To help students get used to the voices, we can prepare a one-page cloze from

the beginning of the cartoon, leaving out only single words or simple phrases, in affect giving

students about 80% of the transcript. After they have had guided practice in listening to a few

minutes of the cartoon in this way, they may become more used to the special characteristics of

each character's voice. Upon completing and checking their cloze (a completed version shown on

an overhead projector is useful), students can take the parts of the characters and imitate their

intonation, voice quality, and expression, making as much noise and having as much fun as they

like.

Reading a Transcript. If there is a story worth understanding, Particularly for longer cartoons,

we may want to prepare a complete transcript for one or more scenes and have students take the

roles before viewing. In this way students have a chance to read and comprehend what they are

going to hear and they have a chance to speak out the lines themselves. The teacher can commenton vocabulary or idioms. Then students can watch without the text.

Performing a Mini-Play. If students have a complete transcript of a story, a cartoon or that of

another genre such as a situation comedy, they can act it out in mini-play style. The advantage here

is that they can mimic and learn the proper intonation and expression from the video. Our students

have done this with A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Comprehension Questions. Comprehension questions can be given before viewing,with students predicting the answers. To aid comprehension, questions can focus

students' attention on the main points of the story. In Yes, Virgina, There is a Santa

Claus (1974, Wolper Productions, 24 minutes), based on a letter to the editor and replythat appeared in The New York Sun in 1897, a little girl writes a letter to the newspaper

to find out if there really is a Santa Claus. Giving students the following questions

before viewing may focus their attention on the main points of the story.



The children's teacher gives them an assignment. What do theyhave to do?

Do you believe in Santa Claus? Do the children? How do theother children treat Virginia?

Virginia asks four adults if there is a Santa Claus. What do eachof them answer?

Who is Tommy? What does he suggest that Virginia do?

Who is Mr. Church? How does he feel about Tommy?

How do the other children feel about Virginia and her ideas at theend of the story?

Because students know that such stories usually follow a pattern of conflict andresolution, they can predict that Virginia's classmates will disagree with her at first but

accept her ideas in the end.

Related Reading. The cartoon Yes, Virginia There is a Santa Claus mentioned above is

based on a famous newspaper article which is printed in most Christmas anthologies. Itmakes good background reading before showing the cartoon. Toward the end of the

cartoon, the teacher reads most of that newspaper article aloud, so at this point our

students will be familiar with it.

For cartoon versions of the classics, the original books are usually quite long and the

cartoon version may take an hour or more, too. However, a cartoon version could be

used as an introduction of lead-in to the reading of a literary piece. For example, the

original Washington Irving The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is about thirty pages long andfilled with hard words, many of which are now archaic. Yet it is a relatively simplestory, a love triangle, and one of the men plays a trick on his rival, or was it a ghost? It

both gives the flavour of early Dutch settlements in the Hudson River Valley (upstate

New York, USA) a few hundred years ago and tells a great Halloween story that justabout all American school children know. It would be shame for our students to miss

out on it because of the vocabulary. Why not hear the story from a good cartoon?

One particularly good version of the abovementioned

story is narrated by Glenn Close (1988, Rabbit Ears

Productions Inc., 25 minutes). Unlike the typicalcartoon, here the narrator, who is a famous actress,modifies her voice as she takes the roles of the various

characters. The scenes are presented as a set of still pictures that move only slightly, and the effect is that of

a good storyteller with a clear voice who illustrates the story with a set of well-chosen pictures. Of course, we hope that the students will eventually read the text in the

original, and when they do, they will already know the basic story.

A high-quality, full-length film could be compared with the original fairy tale; or two

versions of classics, one a cartoon, one a traditional film, could be compared with eachother or with the text. Obviously, these activities require some special skills and could

be a part of or an element added to a literature class or form part of a class on video



interpretation of literature. In such cases, English should be used to discuss

characterization, animation, and so on.

Teaching about Holidays. Cartoons with a holiday theme may be used to teach

something about how that holiday is celebrated in that country or culture. In East Asia,stations such as STAR-plus show such cartoons around Christmas and also perhaps

around Thanksgiving, Halloween, Easter. For related reading and background onAmerican holidays, see Tiersky, E. & Tiersky, M. 1990. The USA: Customs and

institutions. Third edition. New York: Regents Publishing Company, Inc.

The Charlie Brown/Peanuts set have addressed just about every Americanholiday. In Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! poor Charlie Brown has been given a big

assignment over the Christmas and New Year holiday: read Tolstoy's War and

Peace and write a book report on it. Most students can sympathize as they think of the

homework assignments they were given over the holidays. Around his struggles,Charlie Brown's friends are planning a New Year's Eve party, making resolutions,

planning whom to kiss when the clock strikes twelve midnight, and finally, of course,they all sing Auld Lang Syne--all the things Americans do for the New Year.

It is also possible to start with a holiday video and build a whole holiday unit around it,

as we have done with A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving 3 (1973, United Features Syndicate,25 minutes). Using a reading from Tiersky and Tiersky (1990), students make up role

plays about Miles Standish (referred to on the video), and we sing "Over the River andthrough the Woods" (sung at the end of the video). Students take the parts of the

characters as we read through the transcript aloud before we finally watch and enjoy A

Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Notes

1. Much of the material in this article was presented at the 15th Annual Thai

TESOL Meeting, January 12 - 14, 1995, Bangkok.2. Some of the material in this section first appeared in Katchen, J. E., 1994. Using

cartoons to spice up holiday lessons. TESOL Video News, 4(5), 7, 9.3. These activities first appeared in Katchen, J. E., 1993. Thanksgiving activities

with A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Video Rising, 5(2), 7.

Back to Articles Available On-line

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How to Use Cartoons in the EFL Classroom1