| Discourse analysis arose in the1950s mainly focused on language itself. The researchers attachedgreat importance to linguistic system and semantic structure of language and their relationship with socialculture, society and the psychological cognition, while they ignored other resources of meaning-making,such as image, sound, color. Multimodal discourse analysis developed at the end of the20th century in thewest largely overcomes these limitations. Multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) is based on Halliday'ssystemic functional linguistics. It refers to the phenomenon of using various senses, such as auditory, visualand touch senses to present meaning through different kinds of semiotic system, such as verbal, image,sound, action. With the development of high-tech, the combination of MDA and multimedia provides atheoretical support and guidance for the foreign language teaching. The multimedia, especially the PPTcourseware equipped with texts, images, video, animation and voice, implements various kinds of modes toconstruct meaning together. Multimodal PPT belongs to the category of multimodal discourse and therealization of meaning is through the interaction of various kinds of semiotic resources. It is advocated inthe senior high school English teaching. The National English Curriculum Standard of Senior High Schoolissued in2003points out that the teachers should make full use of modern educational technology to enrichteaching resources and enlarge the way of learning English. Multimodality is one of the majorcharacteristics of multimodal PPT which can combine multiple modes, such as text, images, colors andsounds together to make meaning. It can attract the students' attention to the presented information frommultiple channels, enhance the language input and improve the effect of teaching to some extent.Multimodal PPT combines the text, sound, pictures, audio, and video with laws of language learning so asto comply with the characteristics of students' learning. However, due to the limitations of teachers' level ofcomputer skills, PPT courseware made by teachers fails to present its multimodality. As a result, the qualityof teaching is affected to a certain extent. Therefore, improving the quality of PPT in English teachingbecomes a significant issue.Based on the theory of multimodal discourse analysis, input enhancement and the review of relevantstudies abroad and at home, this research aims to explore the current situation of modes used in multimodal PPT, the students' attitude towards multimodal PPT, the teachers' understanding on multimodal PPT anddeficiencies in PPT. Using empirical analysis together with questionnaire and individual interview, thisstudy makes an analysis on30PPTs with2400slides in total by30teachers in Jingzhou high school. Theresult of the data analysis showed that multimodal PPT has a lot of advantages such as a clear presentationand convenient operation. The students have positive attitude towards the use of multimodal PPT. Andaudio mode and video mode are very much favored by them. As for the teachers, most of them liketeaching assisted with PPT. Text mode and picture mode are the two preferable modes to express meaning.But, due to the limited computer skills, there are still some deficiencies in their PPTs. For instance,inappropriate modes distract the students' attention, excessive use of text and inharmonious collocation ofcolors not only make a poor page layout, but also make students be tired of PPT and there is lessinteractivity between teachers and students. On the basis of the above findings, it is suggested that in theprocess of designing PPT teachers should show the advantages of multimodal PPT fully, choose modesaccording to the need of teaching contents and students and adjust the proportion of modes. Variousactivities to increase the interactivity between teachers and students are also in need. At the same time, forthe purpose of improving the quality of PPT, teachers should take part in the computer training. |
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