Graphic Novels and Reading:The impact of reading graphic novels in theupper secondary classroom

Abstract: According to recent reports (Dahlberg & Jarnlo, 2021), young Swedish people are amongthose who read the least number of printed books in the world. This study aims to investigatewhat current research postulates regarding how reading graphic novels may affect the readingmotivation, cultural awareness, and critical literacy, among upper secondary school students.The graphic novel falls under the umbrella term of comic books (Yildirim, 2013). Thisformat has been viewed as harmful for young people previously, and still struggles to berecognized as a legitimate form of literature, and is therefore often excluded from syllabusesand classrooms (Burger, 2018; Griffith, 2010; Yildirim, 2013). For this study, eight articleswere thematically analyzed through four themes. The findings of this study are that usinggraphic novels in the language learning classrooms may improve the reading motivationamongst adolescents, since it draws upon their familiarity with multimodal formats that theyhave become used to through social media. It is argued that the images of the graphic novelswill help to enhance students’ critical literacy as they create more opportunities to criticallyengage with both the typographic text and the visuals. Furthermore, graphic novels areconsidered to help improve students’ reading comprehension because the text is accompaniedby imagery. Additionally, the graphic novel also works well as a medium for students toshare their experiences, and develop their cultural knowledge, with the aid of the immediateresponse from the visuals. The graphic novel has been shown to be a good tool for teachers,and further research needs to be done on its usefulness.