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As a middle school Mandarin teacher, I constantly seek for methods and materials that can substantiate my students’ language acquisition. In particular, I found that the vast majority of my students enjoyed graphic novels and anything were illustrations and stimulating elements assisted the introduction of new vocabulary and syntax.
Hence, I took it upon myself to create supplemental comics for each new unit. The comics contained characters that were similar in age to my students and navigated similar contexts and situations, thus making the material more relatable and fostering student engagement. I also wanted to diversify the cast and showcase ethnicities and cultural backgrounds commonly found in the Greater Los Angeles area (with the main character being of Chinese heritage of course). These comics helped increased reading fluency and overall character recognition, and this was evident in both their fall and spring semester reading assessments. Feedback I received from the students themselves was how much more engaged they were when assigned a new comic per unit. My goal within the next few years is to publish my very own Mandarin second language learning textbook with comic content as the main selling point.