Improve your English with COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS

Hello.

My name is Emma, and in today's video I am going to answer a question I hear a lot.

Many people who are learning English love to read, but the problem they have is when

they read English books, a lot of the times the books are too hard for them, so many students

ask me: "Emma, what's a good book to read to help me learn English?"

So, today I'm going to tell you my piece of advice; what I think students should do if

they like to read and they want to read English books.

I recommend reading comic books or graphic novels.

Now, before I go any further, I wanted to say: "What is a comic book?

And what is a graphic novel?" and then I'm going to tell you why you should read these books.

So, let me show you two examples.

This is an X-Men comic.

Okay?

It's about superheroes; and then we have this book, Watchmen, is a graphic novel.

The difference is pretty much in the length.

Notice that this is very short, whereas this is a collection of comics-okay?-and it's in

a book form.

So this is a graphic novel; this is a comic.

If you open these, there's all these colourful pictures with different conversation and a

storyline.

So, many people think that comics and graphic novels are for children.

This is not true.

Many adults read comics and graphic novels.

And the reason why they are so good for people learning English is because they have so much

conversation in them.

So, if you read a novel, there are a lot of description, a lot of words, sometimes the

author wants to write very poetically, and the language might not be the type of language

people usually use.

When you read comic books or graphic novels, the language is more about conversation, so

you will see a lot of conversation language.

You will see language about common expressions people use, slang, common vocabulary we use

when we talk.

When you read a novel, you don't really get as much of that.

Okay?

You will also see a lot of grammar in comics, as well as graphic novels.

And it's easier to read the grammar or to notice grammar points because sentences in

graphic novels and comics are usually shorter, so you can see examples of the present perfect,

you can see examples of the future tense, you can see examples of the past perfect continuous.

So there are a lot of great grammar points you can notice if you can read graphic novels

or comics.

Okay.

Another thing I wanted to talk about is people don't want to read comics sometimes because

they think they're always about superheroes, and some people don't like reading about superheroes.

Comics and graphic novels cover a lot of different genres.

A "genre" is a way of saying a type.

So, for example, a movie genre is a romantic comedy, or an adventure movie, or a thriller.

These are all examples of genre.

So, comics also have many different genres or types.

Yes, there are superhero comics, like Watchmen or X-Men, but let me show you some of the

other types of comics you might come across.

Okay.

I have here a comic... or, sorry, a graphic novel called Maus.

This book is about a family that lived during World War II and about the Holocaust, so this

is a very serious book.

It's not for children.

It's not a superhero genre; it's more of a drama.

I have here this book, American Born Chinese.

This book is about somebody's experience immigrating to the United States.

So, again, it's about a person's real life experiences.

I have here the book Jerusalem.

This graphic novel-and so, it looks like a novel, but if you look, there's actually a

lot of pictures-is actually about the Middle East and the history of the Middle East.

And then I have this book, The Art of War, which is actually about... a philosophy book.

The Art of War, you might have heard of it.

This is the comic book version.

So, there are so many different types of graphic novels or comics, and they cover all different

types of genres.

So, whatever you like, you can probably find in comic book or graphic novel form, whether

it's romance, biography, comedy - there's many different types of graphic novels and comics.

Let me put these back.

So, one reason why reading graphic novels and comics can be so helpful for students

is that there's a picture with the conversation, and so it's easier to guess what a word means

or to improve your understanding of a new word because you can look at a picture, and

that really helps you understand.

In regular novels there are no pictures, so you have to spend a lot of time looking through

a dictionary to understand the book.

In a graphic novel, you can often guess what something means just by looking at the picture.

Okay.

And another reason why comics or graphic novels are great to read is you have a lot of different

characters; sometimes teenagers, sometimes adults, sometimes seniors.

Different characters use different types of English.

Some people might use formal language, like a professor; some people might use informal

language, like a teenager, they might use slang.

So, when you read a graphic novel or a comic, you can actually see and have an understanding

of the type of English different people use.

You can notice: "Okay, here's a picture of a senior or an elderly person.

What words are they using?"

And then you might see a picture of a teenager, and you can think: "Okay, this person's a

teenager.

How are they speaking?

What words are they using?"

So there's a lot of information you can get from English from comics and graphic novels

that you don't see in regular novels as easily.

So, just to recap: I think comics and graphic novels are great to... if you want to improve

your English and if you like reading.

Comics and graphic novels are not just for children; there are many adult comics and

graphic novels.

You can learn a lot by the conversation you will see in a comic or a graphic novel, and

you can use the picture to help you with your understanding.

So, for these reasons I highly, highly recommend comics and graphic novels.

Last thing I'm going to say: I have a lot of different comics and graphic novels I read.

The ones you saw today are good ones, but there's so many that I love.

If you want to learn about Toronto, where I'm from, I recommend Scott Pilgrim, because

that whole comic is about Toronto, so you can actually learn about another place.

So, thank you for watching, and I look forward to reading your comments about this video.

If you want to practice some of what you learned from this video, you can visit our website

at www.engvid.com, and there you can actually take a quiz on the material we talked about.

You can also subscribe to my channel-don't forget to ring the bell-where you will actually

find more videos on many different subjects, including pronunciation, listening, writing,

reading, and so much more.

So, thank you so much for watching; and until next time, take care.