PIXTON. How I met my soulmate

Imagen de mohamed-hassan en Pixabay. Licencia Pixabay

During the fist term of the course, my students have been working about the topic of "Relationships", friendship, love... and we have done different tasks related to these issues.

After writing a long text where they had to explain about the way their parents met, I classified them into groups of three, grouping them according to the story about their parents (students whose parents met in a similar circunstance). 

First they had to read these stories and talk about them. After that, I told them that they should now write a comic about a funny story where two people meet. 

First, I explained the tool, the different stages and how to change, scenary, characters, colours, positions,... and I showed them an example of a comic I had previously prepared.

Then, they had to write a short outline or script with a brief description of every scene and finally created the comic. 

This was the most difficult part of the task. They had to get an agreement about first, the place, that is not as easy as it may seem and about the story itself. Some students were too impatient to start creating the comic and they did not work enough time on the script, that is an essential element for the final success.

I think that, next time, I will provide students with exaples of funny situations, so that they can find an easier inspiration for the task.

They enjoyed a lot the use of PIXTON, it is quite intuitive and it allows different possibilities and the result is quite motivating and visual and they worked together quite well and very fast indeed.

The learning objectives from this activity were:

• Using an appropriate vocabulary to describe people. The decisions about the physical description and gestures of the characters were in English so that a real practice was made in a specific context.
• Appropriate use of narrative tenses, in the brief outline, they had to write the story that later, they incorporated to the comic strip. 
• Adequate use of connectors in telling a story. These linking words, had to appear in the outline.
• The presence of anecdotes as an integral part of a story. It is the anecdote what they should reflect in the comic.

I think that the use of imagination is a powerful tool when learning a language. I always try to contextualize the tasks I propose my students, and I always insist on the fact that what they tell doesn't have to be true, that imagination will allow them to make use of a wider vocabulary and adopt the story to their knowledge. If they want to use a specific structure or certain expressions, they can make up  a story where they sound quite natural, whereas if they simply tell something that is true, maybe this text, or speech does not make it easy to integrate these words or structures that they want and know.

Once they finished their comics, I printed them and pubkished them in the forum of the unit, where everybody could read and comment them.

As for evaluating the process, I wanted there was not a final assessement, so I made them share the outline of the story with their classmates, So, each group received one script and they provided useful comments about the use of verbs, vocabulary and the presence of appropriate connectors in the story. A second version of the outlines was elaborated by each group taking the classmates' comments into account.

This is one of the comics.

This is the link for the comic:
https://Pixton.com/es/:k9di1m55