I, You, He, She – A picture story-book for the teaching of grammar

Abstract

Katalin Varga’s picture story-book entitled I, You, He, She, It was published by Móra Publishing House in 1973. The first edition was followed by several subsequent ones, most of them by Móra (1978, 1982, 1987, 1993, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019), and by Santos in 2005 and 2006. The repeated editions, and the recent ones published almost annually, refer to the fact that the nearly fifty year old story-book, which helped and supported the teaching of grammar in case of  8–10 year old pupils, and besides this the development of their mother tongue competence, logical thinking, metalanguage competence, is still relevant today.

This article  presents the concept of the story-book, the pictures and the sequence of images which connect the fairy story  to specific knowledge. Besides this, it subjects its language theory content, the exercises connected to it to critical analysis, and it presents the results of an empirical research  on the question of the use of Katalin Varga’s exciting picture story-book during the preparation for the lessons, the lessons or perhaps out-of-school activities by the older and the younger generations of teachers.