Comic Books Are Your Best Friends for Vocabulary Retention in a Foreign Language
This method is the best way I’ve been able to remember new words
As any book lover will tell you, when the universe conspires to place you in front of an attractive bookstore on a day you had no plans to go book shopping, you will pick up a book that will have a significant effect on your future.
In the city of Antibes in the spring of 2022, I picked up the spark that would lead me to want to re-imagine the way foreign languages are taught.
As I walked past the bookstore (Librarie Dernier-Rempart) on the main avenue that connects to the train station, I decided to pop in to see if I could find some souvenirs for my friends. I walked in the door that opened to their sizable comic book anthology section and was immediately hit by “bright shiny object” syndrome.
Never in my life have I ever been interested in comic books, but I couldn’t resist wanting to see the inside of the second anthology of Decorum, written by Jonathan Hickman and illustrated by Mike Huddleston. (Since I was in France, this is the French language version.)
The only reason why I bought it was for the artwork. I was completely enthralled by the use of color, especially the differing palettes to convey mood. After getting it home, I decided I would use it as a study guide since I was struggling to speak the language well.
Up to that point in my French learning journey, I had tried flashcards, apps, videos, reading and re-reading text, and so on. It was so hard for me to remember new words, new verb tenses, and how to form everything into sentences. Nothing stuck, but now I had something new in my hands.
I remembered from my exam-taking years the best way I was able to retain anything was to hand-copy what I was studying. I decided to practice that with this comic book and one night, I had an absolute breakthrough.
One of my bad habits is that I assume things will function consistently. That led to a night when the trains stopped service early because it was a holiday. Because I didn’t think about looking up which days were holidays, and when public transportation would stop on those days, I had to frustratingly download the Uber app after taking the bus halfway back to my apartment.
The driver and I had a bit of a chit-chat on the way, which I was already proud of, and when she asked where on the block she should drop me, I immediately responded, “en face de l’échafaudage.”
Wow! I couldn’t believe what an impressively fluent French speaker I was for those three seconds. How in the world did I say the word for “scaffolding” without even making an effort to remember it?
There are three key elements that make comics the ideal learning tool
1 — Storytelling. As any marketer will tell you, forming an emotional connection is key for someone to deeply connect to a set of words. Of course, we’ve used stories throughout the ages for more than selling products — from fables we remember not to trust people with a history of deceit, and from superstition we avoid walking under ladders.
We are more likely to let our emotions guide our daily actions than actively think about the probability that something might fall on our head. Lean into the power of fiction to turn foreign words you translate into a language you feel.
2 — Visual. I, like many people, would call myself a visual person and a visual learner. Not everyone can see images in their mind, but I can pretty easily, especially memories. Sometimes I can even close my eyes and picture text on the page. That being said, my goal with language learning is not to remember words but to speak effortlessly.
I found that with comics, since I spend more time appreciating what I see, my mind makes more connections to the accompanying words.
3 — Conversational. We mostly talk to people colloquially. It’s hard to connect to people, whether as friends or colleagues, when they speak as if they were a thesaurus for PhD students.
I don’t know about you, but the main reason I want to learn a new language is to connect with others. The language used in comic books is practically all conversational. Seeing slang, idioms, and verb phrases in action, and choosing the pace I could process them, was the key I was looking for.
The method
This isn’t a “hack” because it takes a lot of effort and repetition to get great at anything. See this article from K. Anders Ericsson (and other authors), about deliberate practice.
These are the steps I recommend to you, my fellow language learner, to make the most of this method to retain new vocabulary.
- Read silently
- Look up new words
- Read out loud
- Write out text
- Translate text
This is typically the order of the steps that I take, and sometimes I repeat the same material a few times. I try to use enough text for two pages of a journal I have for this purpose. I don’t do all steps at once, because I know that spacing out learning and practice will increase the chances of retention.
Have you tried writing out and then translating what you’ve read? It’s a great learning technique and you can watch Luca Lampariello explain the Bidirectional Translation Method on this YouTube video.
How to choose a comic book
Do your best to trust your instincts, but avoid material with a lot of world-building or fake words. Focus on getting something that is visually striking to you. The point is to form an emotional attachment to the material in order to retain more, faster.
I hope these tips help you! If you’ve wasted too much of your time with flashcards, get a comic book instead and let me know if this is a more effective learning tool.
Read about the six areas of improvement you can focus on when learning a foreign language:
