A Survey On Multimodal Discourse Of Senior High School Teachers In The English Class

With the development of information technology and the Internet,discourse transmission and expression have become communication with multimodalities.Relevant studies have shown that the practical application of multimodal discourse contributes to English teaching.However,current studies mainly focus on college English classes,and studies comprising senior high school English classes are relatively few.Therefore,the present study analyses multimodal discourse of senior high school teachers in the English class with qualitative and quantitative methods to develop the methodologies and theories in this field and offer some practical suggestions for multimodal discourse.In this study,the research subjects are 55 English teachers from three demonstrated senior high schools in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region,and questionnaire and interview are used as the research instruments.The questionnaire is made based on the theory of Zhang Delu’s(2009,2015)Multimodal Discourse Analysis.The questionnaire includes four dimensions: linguistic mode,bodily mode,visual mode,and auditory mode.Furthermore,the interview is used to determine the reasons of multimodal discourse in the current situation.The two research questions addressed in the present study are:(1)What is the overall situation of multimodal discourse of senior high school teachers in the English class?(2)What are the reasons that affect multimodal discourse of senior high school teachers in the English class?The author has found out the following results:(1)Although some senior high school English teachers do not know much about multimodal discourse,they will use multimodal discourse in the English class to achieve better teaching.And they use linguistic mode,bodily mode,visual mode and auditory mode of multimodal discourse with a frequency of medium-high level.Pure language of linguistic mode is the primary mode in the English class.Except for novice teachers,most teachers use bodily mode relatively frequently.Through comparison,it is found that the teachers with more than ten years of teaching experience use the bodily mode of multimodal discourse more frequently than the teachers with teaching experience of less than five years,and there is a significant difference between them.(2)In the interview,the reason that senior high school English teachers use pure language in the classes is the teaching conception that language is a practical and direct way of English teaching.Moreover,reasons that influence senior high school English teachers’ usage of bodily mode of multimodal discourse can be classified into internal and external reasons.The internal reasons are teachers’ teaching experience,teaching style,communication skill,performance ability,and awareness of using multimodal discourse.In contrast,the external reasons are contents and types of classes,classroom setting,students’ needs,and school’s treatment.On the basis of these findings,some suggestions are put forward for senior high schools and their teachers.For teachers,the suggestions are that teachers should learn multimodal discourse from modern media;novice teachers also should learn multimodal discourse from other skilled teachers.Besides,teachers should use proper multimodal discourse and develop students’ multimodal discourse competence.Finally,schools should offer more training and guidance and give satisfactory treatments for teachers as motivations to promote teaching.