Journal of English Language Teaching

Developing English Language Skills through Laxman’s Cartoons

Dr. Jagdish S, Patil

Associate Professor and Head, Dept of English, Dhanaji Nana Mahavidyalaya, Faizpur. (Affiliated to KBCNM University, Jalgaon)

Keywords: cartoon, R. K. Laxman, activities, pedagogy, productive language skills, LSRW

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Abstract

Every teaching material, teaching approach and technique loses its novelty after practising it for some time. Therefore it appears that the traditional methods of developing language skills fail to serve the purpose thoroughly. Hence, educators tend to explore new innovative methods to teach language skills listening, speaking, reading and writing; LSRW. There are many approaches and several pedagogies in language teaching. However, to add fun, humour, playfulness, novelty and innovativeness rooted in the familiar context, the present paper illustrates a few sample activities for developing the language skills through captioned cartoons of R. K. Laxman. Graphic in the cartoon provides a context and the caption provides a linguistic material to explore various teaching aspects of language teaching. The pedagogy of English language teaching with the help of cartoons as the teaching material makes the teaching – leaning process more active and enjoyable. Similar activities can be designed by using the cartoons with captions in other languages too. This paper illustrates eight activities on productive skills; that is writing and speaking using three cartoons of R. K. Laxman.

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