A Multimodal Move Analysis Of Classroom Power Point Slides Designed By English Major Postgraduates

The ubiquitous Power Point slides have exerted significant influence on the approach to teaching and learning in universities and have attracted considerable attention from researchers in various fields.Although the importance of Power Point slides is typically realized in academic settings like lectures,conferences,and seminars,there is a scarcity of research that has explored the Power Point slides in real teaching classroom,mainly designed by postgraduates.Given this gap,this study investigates the move structure of the Power Point slides,types of visual images,image-text relations.As Power Point slides are frequently applied to present the learned knowledge,share the experimental results,and present the group discussion,the study aims to facilitate student’s classroom presentation and prompt knowledge understanding.To this end,drawing upon genre analysis(Swales,1990),visual image analysis(Kress &van Leeuwen,2006;Zhao & van Leeuwen,2014;Wilson & Landon-Hays,2016;Feng,2020),and the image-text relations(Martinec & Salway,2005),this study scrutinizes 122 Power Point presentation slides,including 3410 slides,presented by the English major postgraduate in a classroom from 2017 to 2020.The current study disposes of the following research questions:(1)What moves can be included in the English major postgraduates’ Power Point presentation slides?(2)Which types of visual images are used to construct professional knowledge in the English major postgraduates’ Power Point presentation slides?(3)What are the image-text relations in the English major postgraduates’ Power Point presentation slides?In terms of generic structure,the Power Point slides fall into the following nine moves,Headline,Contents,Lead-in,Concept-Definition,Explanation,Exemplification,Discussion,References,Thanking,of which the structure indicates that Headline(100%),Contents(93.44%),Concept-Definition(85.24%),Thanking(100%)are essential components,and Lead-in(5.74%),Explanation(77.05%),Exemplification(59.84%),Discussion(19.67%),References(53.28%)are optional components.Most Power Point presentation slides mainly transmit the knowledge.In terms of the types of visual images,the results are elucidated as follows.There are 903 images(26.48%)in all 3410 Power Point slides.The image is categorized into three parts,comprising artistic image(53.94%),naturalistic image(24.8%)and schematic image(21.26%).The artistic image contains 303 cartoons that contribute to an anaesthetic rather than an instructional orientation toward knowledge.94 images are concerned with the professional linguists to introduce the representative works.The data epitomizes a serious phenomenon: the postgraduate seldom take advantage of the image to present the knowledge.When it comes to the image-text relations,the study reveals that out of 903 images,503 ones have nothing to do with the text,merely serving to “beautify” the slides as background or fill in space,rarely used to explain abstract concepts.The remaining 400 slides are relevant to the surrounding text,which are respectively exposition(16.17%),exemplification(12.51%),projection(4.98%),extension(4.65%),and enhancement(1.33%).Ultimately,based on New London Group’s the Pedagogy of Multiliteracy(1996)and Feng Dezheng’s pedagogical functions of the visual image.The study attempts to provide four feasible suggestions to assist the postgraduates in optimizing Power Point slides.The proposals as follows:(1)The postgraduates should take the Lead-in move into consideration,associating the theoretical phenomena with the social context.(2)The postgraduates attach importance to the Discussion move,enhancing interaction and communication with teachers and other students.(3)The postgraduates are supposed to give priority to using a number of various types of visual images,taking advantage of the Power Point slides multimodal characteristics.(4)The postgraduates ought to apply the related image with the text into Power Point slides,performing the visual images ideographic function in the multimodal Power Point.The findings furnish timely assistance in optimizing the multimodal Power Point slides.