Comics and teaching/learning the mother tongue

Resumo

Teaching/learning the mother tongue is a complex process essential in several domains: success at school, qualification for future professional performance and critical citizenship.These aims demand its approach in a transversal way focusing in the development of competences such as the ones related to communication (generally viewed as verbal communication and mainly related to reading and writing). Nevertheless verbal communication relies also on nonverbal elements such as the image, and people need to know how to read them. It is common sense to believe that it is easier to understand a message presented in images than the ones using words. However there are many adults that do not feel at ease when they must read images.Thus, comics may be used in the mother tongue classroom. They may be used as a resource, seen as a content (when considered as a text genre), studied as a language with special characteristics. In the process, they can contribute to the development of competences in reading comprehension.Besides they may also become the issue of the work done in the classroom, if one agrees that involving the pupils in projects is a good way of thinning the distance between school and everyday life and developing competences in them. A project built around comics does contribute to the development of communicative competences (both verbal and nonverbal) and the development of competences in autonomous and teamwork, so important in modern society.