Monday, October 14, 2019
The Impacts Of Cartoons On Child Literacy Essay Example for Free
The Impacts Of Cartoons On Child Literacy Essay Child literacy is one of the main priorities of both federal and private organizations around the world. Literacy among children holistically involved the ability to use language for communication and interaction with other people. Communication may be in the form of reading and/or writing. Such capability in every individual is important for daily social living, since language is the prime tool for an understanding between two minds. Studies have shown that literacy influence an individual’s future, because it plays a major role in an individual’s employment and opportunity for personal and professional development through basic and higher education. Literacy also influences the economic status of a country because citizens better understand the relationships between industry and commercialization. The health condition of a country has also been observed to be positively correlated with literacy rates because individuals are generally taught of the principles of personal hygiene and healthy living through communication in schools through health and science subjects, and in communities through the use of health-related flyers, leaflets and brochures. Literacy among children is continuously being evaluated among children and in the recent years, cartoons have been identified as a possible tool that may be employed to promote child literacy. Cartoons have been traditionally considered as a form of entertainment and have long been enjoyed by children. Cartoons are diagrammatic portrayals of stories or issues that the cartoonist wants to express. Currently, cartoons are considered as a tool for visual literacy or the learning through vision of actions, objects and symbols (Fransecky and Debes, 1972). Cartoons serve as a means of communication that involve both language and drawings that were meant to convey a certain message to its readers.            The possibility of using cartoons in promoting child literacy is currently being investigated around the world. Cartoons may possibly serve as an alternative way to educate children because such type of drawings inherently includes some sense of humor, which is essential to a child’s learning and development. It has been determined that teaching students using an extremely serious attitude generally results in students that are tense and intimidated (Flannery, 1993). Cartoons usually present stories and concepts in a happy tone, unless necessary that certain sections of a cartoon show some melancholy situations, and this setting lightens up and brightens almost any topic or concept that it presented to a student. More importantly, the inherent feature of humor in cartoons facilitates child literacy by attracting students to have confidence in tackling difficult subjects such as science and math (Ulloth, 2002). It has been determined that humor itself, presented singly or in combination with drawings such that in found in cartoons, abolishes the gap between the teacher and the student and promotes cooperation between the two parties (Flowers, 2001).            It has been observed that students enjoy learning almost any subject if presented through the use of cartoons (Rule and Auge, 2005). The enjoyment among students is represented by their enthusiasm during class as well as their persistent inquiries on whether any cartoons strips will be used at any moment during class that day, or whether they would be given any chance to draw their own cartoons on any topic that has been in the outline of that day’s discussion. Other students are much more active and alert in class when cartoons are frequently employed in the classroom, as evidenced by their coming to class early or even way before the first bell rings.            The use of cartoons in child literacy involves similar mental processes that are employed in creativity and problem-solving (Derks, 1987; O’Quinn and Derks, 1997). Since humor is a usual component of cartoons, punchlines are a common part of cartoons, even if these were designed for educational purposes. The combination of humor and problem-solving provides a sense of confidence in a student, wherein a positive reinforcement occurs during the student’s learning process (Berk, 2002). Cartoons are an efficient pedagogical technique that may be used to promote child literacy through increasing the students’ motivation to identify and enjoy humor. Graphical sketches are effective in teaching students because these improvement memory through visual perception and acuity (Rule, 2003). Cartoons also enhance a student’s thinking through analogy and also help determine concepts which are generally perceived by students as difficult or incomprehensible.            It is also improvement that the perception of cartoons be understood in terms of analysis and self-motivation. When students are driven to accept a concept based on the positive features they see during the initial presentation of the topic, students are highly motivated to understand, learn and remember the concept. Cartoons provide a method of presenting a concept to a student in such an attractive way that only a negligible fraction of the student population would negatively react to the use of cartoons for teaching in the classroom. Cartoons succeed in teaching students specialized concepts in school because such type of media facilitates the students to understand their environment, which thus facilitates learning.  The environment may be the classroom or school setting where the student is situated, together with the rest of the members of the class and the instructor. Such familiar zone of using cartoons relaxes the students and makes them feel at home, which is usually connected with watching cartoons on television or reading comic books at their own leisure time in their bedrooms. Such connection of cartoons and enjoyment also results when cartoons depicting school topics or concept will result in the full cooperation of the student, which in turn results in the positive psychological functioning of the student. Once full cooperation and functioning commence, learning will consequently start.            It is also possible that students be asked to draw their own cartoon strips, either alone or in small work groups. Since cartoons symbolize enjoyment to the students, cooperating with classmates in the classroom will then be easier that to ask students to work together on some other activity such as research report writing or an analysis of a science problem using an experimental apparatus. Cartoon-making may also serve as a method which the instructor may use to determine how each student could express himself or show his understanding and appreciation of a class content. It has been determined that students are more easily convinced to start cartoon-making next to drawing or sketching. The advantage of cartoons is that both language and sketching is involved, that it will be easier for the instructor to directly understand what a student wants to convey. It would seem more difficult to understand a sketch since no words are included here, and the interpretation of the instructor may be different from what the student wished to express. References Berk RA (2002): Humor as an instructional defibrillator: Evidence-based techniques in teaching and assessment. Sterling, VA: Stylus. 268 pages. Derks PL (1987): Humor production: an examination of three models of creativity. J. Creat. Behav. 21:326-326. Flannery M (1993): Making science a laughing matter. J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 22:239-241. Flowers J (2001): The value of humor in technology education. Technol. Teach. 60:10-13. Fransecky RB and Debes JL (1972): Visual literacy: A Way to Learn- A way to teach. Association for Educational Communications and Technology: Washington, D.C. OQuin K and Derks PL (1997): Humor and creativity: A review of the empirical literature. In: Runco M, ed., Creativity research handbook. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, p. 223-252. Rule AC (2003): The rhyming peg mnemonic device applied to learning the Mohs scale of hardness. J. Geosci. Educ. 51:465-73. Rule AC and Auge J (2005): Using humorous cartoons to teach mineral and rock concepts in sixth grade science class. J. Geosci. Ed. 53(5):548-558. Ulloth J (2002): The benefits of humor in nursing education. J. Nurs. Educ. 41:476-481.
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