Teaching with comics to develop competences in oral interaction in the mother tongue

Abstract

Since the 90s, I have been studying the use of comics in teaching Portuguese as a mother tongue in compulsory education in Portugal. Taking into account the fact that nowadays the teaching process is centered in the development of competences, I sustained the use of comics to develop competences in reading and writing. Lately, I developed a study consisting in the analysis of the syllabus for teaching Portuguese as a mother tongue focused on the presence of comics in that document and the role comics may play in the development of competences in oral and written communication. Using document analysis, I gathered information from the syllabus concerning the two aspects mentioned above: i) presence of comics and ii) their contribution to the development of competences in oral and written communication. Afterwards, data concerning the second aspect afore mentioned were submitted to content analysis. 

In this text, I present part of the results of this study concerning the analysis of the presence of comics in the syllabus for primary school (the first four years in the Portuguese educational system) and the role they may play in the development of competences in oral interaction. The findings allowed me to conclude that, although comics are scarcely mentioned in the syllabus, they may in fact contribute to the development of competences in oral interaction by 6-9 or 10 year-old children.