The Application Of Multimodal Teaching To English Grammar Teaching In Junior Middle School

Grammar teaching plays a significant role in English teaching.However,in traditional grammar teaching,teachers usually teach grammar by presenting grammar knowledge mechanically and asking students to do lots of drilling.Through such kind of spoon-feeding grammar teaching method,students always learn grammar passively which leads to a lack of enthusiasm and initiative in their grammar learning.As a result,traditional grammar teaching often fails to bring the desired effects.Nowadays,to explore a new way of grammar teaching has been a heated topic in English teaching.With the notion of “Multimodal Teaching” proposed by New London Group and the rapid development of multimedia,Multimodal Teaching(MT)has been receiving more and more attention.MT advocates that teachers should utilize multimedia resources(such as animation,pictures,sounds,texts and so on)as well as their own body language to interact with students so as to fully stimulate their senses,improve their learning interest and initiative,and thus to improve the teaching efficiency.Therefore,English grammar teaching should also be multimodal.This study is aiming to explore the effects of MT in grammar teaching in junior middle school through a case of Count/Mass Nouns(CMN).Research questions of this study include:Question 1: What are the effects of Multimodal Teaching on CMN?1)Does Multimodal Teaching have a promoting effect on students' achievement in CMN?2)Is Multimodal Teaching more effective than traditional teaching method in students' achievement in CMN? If yes,in what aspects is Multimodal Teaching more effective than traditional teaching method?3)Which way is more effective in students' long-term memory of CMN?Question 2: What are the students' attitudes towards Multimodal Grammar Teaching?This empirical research lasts 7 weeks,during which teaching treatments,pre-test,immediate post-test,delayed post-test,questionnaire and interview are adopted.The software SPSS 21.0 is used to analyze the data collected.The research participants are 72 students in two parallel classes in Grade 7 in Wenhai Middle School.The controlled class(CC)is taught by traditional grammar teaching method,while the experiment class(EC)is instructed by Multimodal Teaching.The effects of the two grammar teaching methods are compared and analyzed through the results of three test papers,and students' attitudes towards Multimodal Teaching in grammar teaching are revealed by the results of questionnaire and interview.The research findings can be concluded as below:1)Multimodal Teaching is proved to have a promoting effect on students' achievements in CMN.It is more effective than traditional grammar teaching in improving students' abilities to distinguish count/mass nouns and in enhancing students' abilities to master the single/plural forms of count nouns.What's more,students have longer memory of CMN knowledge through Multimodal Teaching,compared with students learning through traditional grammar teaching method.2)A majority of students hold a positive view about the effects of Multimodal Teaching in grammar teaching.Most students prefer Multimodal Teaching and multimedia resources to traditional grammar teaching method.After the experiment treatment,many students are more willing to learn grammar and learn grammar with other resources to make grammar learning more interesting and effective.On the whole,Multimodal Teaching increases students' learning interest and initiative in grammar to some extent,which offers some reference for future grammar teaching.