VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES& INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES


LUU THI THU HA
AN ACTION RESEARCH ON USING THE COMIC BOOK CALVIN
AND HOBBES TO MOTIVATE NON-MAJOR STUDENTS AT AIC
AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL TO LEARN
VOCABULARY
( Nghiên cứu về cách sử dụng truyện tranh Calvin and Hobbes để khuyến khích học
viên không chuyên tại trường Quốc tế Mỹ học từ vựng)

M.A MINOR THESIS FIELD. ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE.
SUPERVISOR. DO TUAN MINH (Ph.D)

Hanoi, 20

the comic? ……………………………………………………………
3. What are the problems faced by students when learning vocabulary
through the comic? …………………………………………………….

Chapter 2: Literature Review
4-10
A. Overview …………………………………………………………….
4
B. Literature Review ……………………………………………………
1. Aspects of the vocabulary teaching …………………………………
2. “Motivation” in English language teaching……………………………

4
5

v
3. The use of comic in teaching vocabulary …………………………….
4. Background about Calvin and Hobbes comic…………………………
6
8
C. Conclusion…………………………………………………………
10
Chapter 3: Research Design and Methodology
11-13
A. Design of the Research……………………………………………
11
B. The Sample…………………………………………………………
11
C. Description of Instruments…………………………………………
11

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B. Recommendations………………………………………………….
33

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1. Teachers should show their enthusiasm for the comic
first…………………………………………………………………………….
2. Choose Your Comic Carefully……………………………………
3. Be more active and creative………………………………………
C. Limitation and Suggestion for Further Research……………………
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Chapter 6. References
A. Book Source…………………………………………………………
B. Internet Source………………………………………………………
36
Appendices
I- XVII


Table 4. Comic’ suitability………………………………………………
23
Table 5. Effectiveness of the method…………………………………….
24
Table 6. Substitute material for teaching…………………………………
25
Table 7. Engagement into the lesson …………………………………
26
Table 8. Enhance the relationship………………………………

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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
A. Statement of Problems
Learners at the American International College (AIC) study English as a foreign language.
Their ages fluctuate from nineteen to thirty. Although they are keen on learning English, they
are often off-task and not using their time effectively, or ―being stuck‖ and not knowing what
to do next. When teaching I noticed that many of them did not have the strategies or tools
they need to proceed in writing or reading. While observing the students reading for
details, speaking to communicate, or convey a given massage; they ask a lot about words
they do not know or words they need to use. Therefore, I began to go through my own
materials that I had collected in training sessions and look for good strategies for
teaching vocabulary, writing process, and classroom management. Bearing in my mind, it
is important for people to take responsibility for their learning and productivity in order to
be positive contributors in and outside the classroom. What could I do as a teacher to help
students develop the skills they need to take responsibility?
Comic Books took my interest in reading, and they also helped me in the subject of English.

85)

C. The Significance of the Study
There are many factors that are important to how a student learns. These factors include the
following; how the teacher teaches the students, the curriculum the teacher uses, the
environment of the students, and the home-life of the students. However, students are rarely
asked what they think about how the type of material impacts their learning. In particular, the
importance of this study is to find out from the students, if they feel whether they can learn
best when they use students books in class for a period of time of 100 minutes or whether
they think they can learn better if they have additional material to work on. This study may
have value to several different groups. It can be valuable to the teacher, first and foremost,
because if a teacher can decide what kind of material for teaching and learning that goes on in
a class, impacts a students, the teacher may be able to make modifications within the
framework of the school schedule, that incorporate these ideas. Secondly, it might be
interesting in the future to continue this study with major students and see how the type of
material they have impacts their learning? Another potential study in the future might be to
interview teachers who teach the students books only and those who teach with additional
materials, and see what differences exist between these two materials in terms of their effect
to the teacher‘s attitude and their teaching methods.
D. Theoretical Frame Work
Learning is an extremely complex human process. During my five years of teaching I have
used many strategies to enhance students learning and to teach new concepts. I am still not
convinced that I thoroughly understand how students learn. Yet, at this point, I do believe

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students learn through experiences. They build on past experiences and previous knowledge
to process new concepts. Students need to be actively involved in their education. Interested
and enthusiastic students are more willing learners, and I believe willing learners become
active participants in their own instruction. As students become more actively involved in
their learning, they develop interest and enthusiasm for the content and/or the process that is

CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Overview
Learning is considered a serious matter in helping learners to develop, is still a need to liven
the process of understanding different concepts. Not only does humor offer a new type of
learning, but also is known to provide learners who are learning different topics with the
ability to remember different ideas at a more thorough level. If you have students who are
learning vocabulary, writing or reading, then using vocabulary comic is a simple way to liven
the learning process.
Even though most consider vocabulary comic as a secondary source or addition to the
learning process, many others have found that there are more to comic then meets the eye.
B. Literature review related to the study
1. Aspects of the vocabulary teaching
2. ―Motivation‖ and ―attitude‖ in English language teaching
3. The use of comic in teaching English
4. What is the origin of Calvin and Hobbes? Its characteristics?
1. Aspects of the vocabulary teaching
Vocabulary is the knowledge of words and word meanings. As Steven Stahl (2005) puts it,
"Vocabulary knowledge is knowledge; the knowledge of a word not only implies a definition,
but also implies how that word fits into the world." Vocabulary knowledge is not something
that can ever be fully mastered; it is something that expands and deepens over the course of a
lifetime. Instruction in vocabulary involves far more than looking up words in a dictionary
and using the words in a sentence. Vocabulary is acquired incidentally through indirect
exposure to words and intentionally through explicit instruction in specific words and word-
learning strategies. According to Michael Graves (2000), there are four components of an
effective vocabulary program:
 wide or extensive independent reading to expand word knowledge
 instruction in specific words to enhance comprehension of texts containing those
words
 instruction in independent word-learning strategies, and


tasks.

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3. The use of comic in teaching vocabulary
Comics as an educational tool have held the attention of teachers and academia for quite
some time now. Coming from a tool to provide a non-animated entertainment to an age where
movies are being based on such hit series, comics are a serious multi-million dollar business
now. And, all the adulation is well deserved, comics fulfill the inherent ability of humans to
visualize something in a better fashion and retain it for a longer period of time. Over the next
decade, comics began gaining ground in the world of education, slowly finding its way into
the course catalogs of American higher learning institutions. Using comics, English teacher
Jenn Natalie (June 1, 2009 at 12.50pm) wrote in a teaching forum that ―I‘ve used Calvin &
Hobbes in my English courses in France. It makes an excellent vocabulary builder and
conversation tool. Plus it's fun to read! I also translated one of the strips in my German class
(it was a group project) - we then performed it as a sketch. In brief, C&H also works really
well in foreign language courses‖ ( />19991224/loose.dtd)
Today, educators at all levels are designing new ways of teaching through comics. Dozens of
schools across the world ordered the curriculum before it was even complete. The National
Association of Comics Art Educators evangelizes colleges and universities on the importance
of comics-based courses. Their website (www.teachingcomics.org) features the syllabi of
existing courses, instructional units written by comic writers and professors, and an online
community of comic‘s educators.
Comics have good reputation for its varieties which are said to be:
Motivating. By far, the most frequently mentioned asset of comics as an educational tool is
its ability to motivate students. Pictures tell any story more effectively than words. (Sones,
1944, p. 239)
Visual. Comics, being composed of "pictorial and other images" (McCloud, 1993, p. 9), is a
fundamentally visual medium. Pictures and text shoulder the burden of the story together. In
the struggle to engage students of all learning dispositions, comics can prove to be a
formidable tool.

humorous antics of Calvin, an imaginative six-year-old boy, and Hobbes, his energetic and

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sardonic—albeit stuffed—tiger. Syndicated from November 18, 1985 until December 31,
1995, at its height Calvin and Hobbes was carried by over 2,400 newspapers worldwide. To
date, more than 30 million copies of 18 Calvin and Hobbes books have been printed.
The strip is vaguely set in the contemporary Midwestern United States, in the outskirts of
suburbia (West 1989). Calvin and Hobbes themselves appear in most of the strips though
several have focused on Calvin's family. The broad themes of the strip deal with Calvin's
flights of fantasy, his friendship with Hobbes, his misadventures, his views on a diverse range
of political and cultural issues and his relationships and interactions with his parents,
classmates, educators, and other members of society. The dual nature of Hobbes is also a
recurring motif; Calvin sees Hobbes as alive, while other characters see him as a stuffed
animal. Together, they meet many of the problems, gaining lots of bizarre insights and
misadventures along the way.
Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, has certainly
made peanut butter out of his life. Born on July 5, 1958,
Watterson got a job as a political comicist at the Cincinnati
Post after he graduated with a degree in Political Science from
Kenyon College in 1980. Fired after six months, he worked at
an advertising firm for four years before he came up with Calvin and Hobbes. Some of the
people who have inspired him are Charles Schulz, Walt Kelly, George Herriman, and Winsor
McCay. From the Reuben Award in 1986, Watterson has won many awards, his last being the
Harvey Award in 1996. Worldwide sales of the book makes Watterson's heartwarming
depiction of precocious six-year-old Calvin and his imaginary, pouncing pet tiger Hobbes
unquestionably one of the most popular and beloved comics of all time.
Main Character List ( Pictures adapted from www.photobucket.com)
Calvin: The star of Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin is self-
centered and full of mischief, just like most 6 year old kids.
Highly imaginative and stubborn, he often runs into sticky

Rosalyn: Calvin is afraid of his babysitter,
Rosalyn. She‘s really brave because nobody
else would take the job. However, Calvin is
always plotting some sort of problem for her.

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Moe: Moe loves to bully Calvin. Sometimes, he will pick Calvin
up and give him a beating. He usually ends up trying to steal
Calvin‘s allowance. However Moe is not the brightest crayon in
the box so Calvin always gets the last laugh.
I first met this interesting comic when it appeared at the last page of
the Vietnam News. Then I go deep insight discovering it in the website as well as in the
Consultant of United State Embassy in Hanoi where I can read books free of charge.
C. Conclusion
The resurgence of interest in this form of entertainment has spawned a host of texts and
magazines seeking to ride the wave on using comics for educational purposes. All of these
have taken advantage of the inherent characteristics that make this medium as attractive as an
educational tool. English now becomes more than a mere frill to a true vehicle to disseminate
one's ideas. With the emergence of such a need, comics can fill this gap because of its multi-
dimensional nature, combing both words and pictorial images. The study of using Calvin and
Hobbes in teaching English has never been conducted in any thesis in Vietnam but it is not
the new method among the teachers all over the world. So I do hope that doing this research
will help Vietnamese teachers know how to use these new materials in their professional
practices.
approximately 24 hours during the eight week period. My primary focus was on their
progression in using vocabulary which they learnt from the comic materials, although I also
observed (and perhaps enquired about) interactions during their other work.

C. Description of Instruments. I used reconstruction activities based on comics to get my
pre-intermediate level English students to interact with texts. I designed kinds of activities
and exercises with Calvin and Hobbes for use in the class. All the materials were downloaded
from the website www.photobucket.com which has more than 3000 comics and those I got
from the United State of American Consultant in Hanoi.

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D. Procedure of the Observations and the Interviews
The student‘s questionnaire has three parts regarding on the following information:
background information, enjoyment experiment and helpful motivation. A sample
questionnaire of the students‘ survey and students‘ reflection on the studying method is
shown in the appendix.
The instrument used for calculating the result is SPSS which is well-known as the most
widely used programs for statistical analysis in social science. It is used by market
researchers, health researchers, survey companies, government, education researchers,
marketing organizations and others. In addition to statistical analysis, data management (case
selection, file reshaping, creating derived data) and data documentation (a metadata
dictionary is stored in the data file) are features of the base software.
E. Pilot Testing
Once instruments were developed, the study was piloted in November 2009 with students in
the AIC College in Hanoi in order to test and refine instruments for full-scale implementation.
Seventeen students participated in the pilot, during which time researchers asked students to
identify confusing questions in the survey. Researcher also tested out an implementation

variety of language to which students are seldom exposed. By using comic with characters
with which the students could identify, I designed the activities as the following (note that all
the activities listed were mixed during the conducting period).
Activity 1. Create a written story based on the picture
I removed speech from a comic. Cut them up and gave out. Then I asked them to order and to
imagine what the story or situation is. Groups act out their version for the class. The purpose
of this activity is for them to tap into their creativity and flexibility when using comics. This
student learning activity using comics should be fun and relaxed. This will help students who
have difficulty with creative writing.
Activity 2. Aim. To practice telling the story of a sequentially-ordered comic that has been
scrambled up and to reinforce the use of time-sequence transition words to maintain the unity
of a paragraph or story (e.g., First, the boy left for school. Next…)
I cut up the pictures and got students to reorder the story. I made this more difficult and
challenging linguistically by giving separate frames to each student in a group and asked
them to not show the pictures until they had arrived at an order through describing the
pictures. Then, I removed the last picture of a comic and asked students to think of an ending.
Students voted for the best ending.
Activity 3. Aim. To help student recognize word reductions in written text, identify the
corresponding long form, and practice these reductions orally

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I gave students a comic with a short paragraph for each frame. Ask students to reduce each
paragraph to one sentence for each frame. Compare their efforts to the original. With higher
levels I have them discussed about techniques of summarizing the message.
Activity 4. Fill in the blank
I wanted to allow students to be creative, relaxed, and productive. I asked them to write
sentence descriptions of what happened in each frame of a comic in which little or no text
appeared. They were required to describe each aspect of the comic and draw conclusions.
Activity 5. Exploit the topic inside
I chose a key situation which would involve language students might need to practice, such as

to figure it out from the context of the comic before using the dictionary.
Activity 9. Grammar building

The idea was to keep the process simple while developing their creativity. As the students
wrote with greater ease and success, I began using the comic to teach sentence construction
and grammar. Using the comic and the descriptions the students had written, I was able to use
the students' own writing to teach nouns, verbs, and grammar. We also looked at topics such
as subject-verb agreement, reported speech, direct speech (e.g., Hey, move your car!) and
reported speech (The man said, "Move your car!"); as well as article and preposition use.
Then students would practice formation of different verb tenses (i.e., changing the present
tense of the action in the strip to the past tense).
Activity 10. Rearrange the paragraph
Still later I was able to provide students with the entire paragraph written incorrectly, and the
students had to reorganize the paragraph so that the sentences flowed in an order that was
appropriate. I tried to improve students' listening by asking them reading aloud what they had
done.

Activity 11. Vote for the best comic

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Which comic do you think is the funniest? After you read some of these comics, try to make
your own comic! Think of an interesting word or phrase. Students exchange papers in their
groups, read each other's ideas, and then vote on the best story. Comics are particularly useful
because they have pictures to accompany what might otherwise be somewhat dense language
(particularly with Calvin).
Activity 12. Aim. To practice describing characters using adjectives (e.g., Calvin is a very
creative boy);
I assigned students to work in small groups (preferably three to a group) then I gave them the
comic. I asked students to take turns discussing the action in the story, paying special note to
facial expressions, gestures, setting, etc. I then had students down a list of five things they

Increased individual participation
Helped student- teacher relations
Increased interesting in reading
At first I intended to use both teachers‘ survey and students‘ survey for the research.
However, when going further, it came out that not every English teacher knew about this
famous comic let alone as using it in their academic performance. Also no teacher helps me
in using the worksheets I prepared for them so I decided to omit the teacher‘ surveys.
Also I found out that some stories do not appropriate to students in terms of children behavior
and Vietnamese context. So I had to read the stories carefully and choose the appropriate
ones before using.
B. Result
1. Results of Questionnaire.
1.1 Characters
The survey asked students whether or not they liked the characters and to explain why they
did or did not like them. A majority of students said that they liked the characters (80%),
with no significant differences by gender and comic format (N=50). Students who liked the
characters provided 30 comments about why they liked the characters. The top reasons are as
follows:
 The majority of students thought that the characters were funny/entertaining (33.3 %).
 Some students liked that the characters because they were ―human-like‖ (26.7%).
 Students liked that the characters explained information (6.7%).
 Students also liked that the characters were lovely (33.3).
The following quotes further illustrate what students liked about the characters:
The characters all had a personality, even Hobbes, a stuffed animal. They were funny
and acted like humans.

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Hobbes was kind of animal-like and that caught my eye.
They explained stuff that you might not know.
Calvin and Hobbes are good character, they are so lovely though naughty.

 About three-fourths of the students agreed or strongly agreed that they liked the
drawings and that those drawings helped them understand the story.
 A majority of students also agreed or strongly agreed that the information was
interesting (74%).
 Most students disagreed or strongly disagreed that the story was too boring (86%).
 The aspect of the comic that students liked best was the drawings, pictures and colors
(88% of comments). Students explained that the pictures helped clarify concepts
presented in the text and made the comic more interesting. Others felt they added a
helpful level of detail.
 Students praised the humor of the comic (30%). Students reported especially liking
specific comics.
 Students made positive comments about the story, including the setting, the narration,
and the dialogue (20 %).
 Students said that they liked that the story was easy to read (20%).
 Students also liked the length of the comic (10%).
The following quotes further illustrate what students liked best about the comic:
I like[d] the pictures and the story were cute. I like the fact that it is attractive though it
was not colorful.
I liked the pictures, the very good drawings and how they showed the animal interacting
like humans.
For most of the closed-ended survey items, students‘ positive opinions about the comic did
not differ significantly. Table 1, below, shows these items:

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Table 1: Student Perceptions of Comic Appeal
10%
36%
0%
12%
0%

this one
Overall, the
story was too
long
I liked the
drawings
The
drawings
helped me
understand
th story
I'd like to
read more
stories about
the same
characters
I strongly disagree
I disagree
I agree
I strongly agree
I'm not sure
Text Difficulty
The survey asked students if the words were hard to read, why they were hard to read. The
most common concern was that the vocabulary was difficult to understand (30%), followed
by too many words in the text (20%), other responses (26%) (e.g., ―the screen was blurry‖;
―the words were underlined between shots‖; ―too many words in one area‖; ―there wasn‘t
enough space between words‖; and ―they were boring‖), and the text being too small (8%).
Some words do not appropriate (16%). As shown in Table 2:
Table 2. Text difficulty