An Action Research On The Impact Of Multimodal Teaching On FLSA And Classroom Reticence

A large amount of interaction in class is one of the indispensable conditions for learners to master a foreign language.However,Chinese researchers have pointed out that college English listening and speaking class adopt mainly auditory mode,so students lack motivation and enthusiasm to learn oral English.Meanwhile,English speaking,as an essential form of language output,is far from satisfactory,so teachers often encounter the embarrassing classroom reticence.Researches(Amy B.M.Tsui,1996,Hu & Fell-Eisenkraft,2003)show that classroom reticence is closely related to the anxiety due to language incompetence.Multimodal teaching method encourages teachers to use multimedia,lead students to realize language input by fully employing multiple modes and realize language output by various class activities,so as to achieve effective class interaction.Hence,the researcher applied multimodal teaching method in college listening and speaking class,and meant to solve the three following questions:(1)Can foreign language speaking anxiety(FLSA)effectively explain classroom reticence? If yes,how does FLSA account for classroom reticence?(2)Is multimodal teaching method an efficient way to reduce students' foreign language speaking anxiety? If yes,in which aspects?(3)By using multimodal teaching method,will the English classroom reticence be improved effectively? If yes,in which aspects?The subjects of this research are 127 freshmen of non-English majors from Taiyuan Institution of Technology.Three instruments are adopted: questionnaires,semi-structured interviews and teaching reflection.The collected data are analyzed by SPSS17.0 and Excel software.The major findings are as follows: 1)By establishing the standardized regression formulation,it can be learned that FLSA can effectively explain classroom reticence;2)Multimodal teaching method can effectively reduce FLSA on the whole;only the factor“Avoidance behavior” is not improved significantly;3)Multimodal teaching method can break classroom reticence to some extent,including “talking to the teacher”,“talking within the groups”,and “giving speeches”,except “communicating with classmates in English” and “individualefforts”.Moreover,the thesis elaborates the limitation of the present study and enlightmenment for the further study.In multimodal English listening and speaking class,teachers should employ task-based approach,encourage students to automatically accumulate concerning background knowlege before class;class activities should be designed accordingly and consistently,and mode or combination of modes should be used reasonably;teachers shouldn't lay too much stress on multimedia,and the entertainment phenomenon in class need also be alerted;multimodal teaching requires students' dominant role in class,at the same time,teachers' leading role also must not be neglected;more positive and encouraging assessment should be reflected to students to enhance their courage to speak English actively.