Grammarcomic.com

Grammarmancomic.com is a creative website for young English learners where the principal tools for this purpose is reading, writing and drawing comics. The site shows series of funny comics in which students are challenged to detect grammatical errors committed by the characters.

This original and innovative website is full of colors and striking designs that make people want to get into the grammarman super hero’s world. The comics we find here mix images, texts and sound to relate the story. Apart from the episodes of grammarman, we can also find more fun material such as interactive games, reading sources, puzzles and curiosities.

Grammarman comic began in august 2005. Its creator is Brian Boyd, an Irish teacher who lives and works in Thailand as a full-time English teacher for the British Council. His idea started when he realized that all his students loved reading comics all the time, even in his English class where they did it secretly. So, he thought that making English activities with comics would catch the kid’s attention better and it would make them enjoy learning English grammar. Since then, Grammarman comic has been published once a month in magazines and newspapers in Thailand, Canada, Brunei, Malaysia, Argentina, Russia and China. The website started also for making the comics available for people who do not live in these countries.

Comic’s specifications

Grammarman has been called by his creator as "the world's first and only grammar superhero" which mission is to defend English language from the grammar enemies. He has the ability to detect errors in spelling,and grammar structure. Grammarman lives in Verbocity, a massive multicultural urban center, where he takes care of the citizen’s language and good communication.

This super hero has a work team conformed by two more heroes. Alpha-bot who is the world's smartest android. There's nothing about grammar that Alpha-bot doesn't know. The other team member  is called Sitax who is an unusual visitor from a distant galaxy who came to earth to learn English by Grammarman’s side.

Grammarman comic as a teaching tool

All the website contains a big diversity of links with pieces of advise for teachers on how they can use these comics to teach English in their classes, depending on the contents of each website’s section. A lot of fun and educative challenges can be implemented through these tips.

“Notes for teachers and articles for teachers” are some of these links. They are very useful for planning activities in the classroom based on Grammarman comic. These sections also justify the comic’s strategies for teaching English giving reasons about why it is so useful, why teachers should implement this playful tool in their classes. Additionally, these links explain all the comic’s advantages for catching the student’s attention and the true educational mission of Grammarman hero.

Grammarman comic as a learning tool

The principal reason for Grammarman comic has been so well implemented in English classes is because children really enjoy reading comics. They find it hilarious and completely absorbing, so they can see learning English like something easy and truly reachable thanks to this.

In this website, there are lots of playful activities for students based on comics. One of the most implemented in English classes is the “wordless comics”. It’s about comics stories related by only images. So, kids can create their own stories starting from the images they see. What kid doesn’t enjoy making up stories? It helps children get vocabulary and grammar structure while they are using their imagination and having fun.

Moreover, these comic’s activities are supported by audio, used for students to read the comics and listen to the characters at the same time, so they can enjoy their funny voices and learn about English pronunciation and intonation. The mix between images and sound has always been a really effective pedagogical strategy, then it makes part of the important advantages of the grammarman’s website.

After reading all these amazing features and discovering this site advantages, and seeing how this tool, facilitates the student’s language comprehension, it is highly recommendable to consider the use of Grammarmancomic.com as a good resource in the process of teaching and learning English to young students today.

Written by 

Ana Maria Rico