Using Picture Sequences for Controlled Writing

Abstract

The other day I came across a catalogue reference to some wall pictures, sets of cartoon sequences done by Fougas, which must have been used by a million or more teachers. I remembered the first occasions on which I had used them, (and they were not new then) twenty-two years ago in a Bangkok secondary school. Various incidents came to mind. There was a time when a student, having identified the first picture of one sequence as a couple of dogs standing on either side of a bone, said that the second picture showed two crocodiles. When I looked again at the two dogs in picture two, now snarling and bristling, I could see the unsophisticated student’s point of view. Then there was the time when not one student in a class of fifty-odd could see why a certain monkey, which had snatched an old man’s glasses and tried them on, was returning the specs to the outraged owner. My students often did not see what I saw.