"e;It's One Less Plate That They're Spinning"e;. Graphic Novels to Help Struggling Writers?

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: A, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (Curriculum & Instruction), language: English, abstract: In the history of teaching, different kinds of visual literacies could be shown beneficial for students; it need not be a whole novel rendered in pictures, it can start with simple letter recognition. The present study will deal with a struggling writer's experiences with graphic novels. My single case study participant is a 6th-grade, male struggling writer of African descent, born in the U.S. He is not professionally diagnosed, but has an IEP at his middle school for "e;executive function disorder,"e; which officially does not exist as a "e;disease."e; His teachers have noticed that he has trouble executing written tasks, although he is perfectly able to dictate content of high quality. It seems to be not only a graphomotor dysfunction, for he can type a little better than handwrite; the main problem for him is to start a writing task, and also to finish it. As preliminary data from a year-long tutoring experience in a local Reading Clinic revealed, during which time I worked with him first in a classroom environment for half a year, and then in my office with just two tutees present, the boy reads at 9th grade level; however, when asked to do a quickwrite in 10 minutes, he can only come up with sentences like, "e;Can I have a drink please?"e;, whereas the other tutees managed to write half a page or a page of a story. His handwriting is huge, uneven, bears mechanical errors (although not enough to call him dyslexic for his age category), and so slow-paced that he cannot manage to finish a task in a given time. In clear opposition to this stands the observation that Remy has an astonishingly advanced vocabulary; when talking to him, one thinks he is much older and more mature, and very polite and well-behaved. This impression fades when one tutors him, and he exhibits unsuppressed, child-like behavior like farting and belching without embarrassment. The other participants are 28 teachers / professors who use graphic novels and took an online survey; 2 high school English teachers who do not use graphic novels and were interviewed personally; 20 authors and illustrators, as well as scholarly reviewers of graphic novels who took their respective online surveys.