An Analysis Of Teacher Multimodal Discourse In College English Listening And Speaking Class

Multimodal discourse analysis is a new way of discourse analysis. Thetheoretical basis of the multimodal discourse analysis is from the perspective ofSystemic Functional Linguistics. Halliday is the representative of linguists in this field.Since the beginning of1950s, Harris, as an American linguist, proposed a study whichanalyzed the discourse. In this kind of study, great efforts of the discourse analyzinglinguists have been paid. In the meanwhile, all kinds of theories and methods ofdiscourse analysis have been put forward. As a milestone in1996, Kress van Leeuwenraised visual syntax in the multimodal discourse analysis.This has been received increasing attention from applied linguists in recent yearsand teacher multimodal discourse has come into focus due to its vital role in secondlanguage teaching (SLT). What kind of teacher discourse will lead to what kinds ofeffects is another topic, which needs to have a further study (Zhang Delu,2009).This research is mainly based on the Systemic Functional Linguistics, which isfounded by Halliday. Teacher multimodal discourse in the Chinese College EnglishListening and Speaking Class is analyzed in this research. Firstly, the author raised anargument of which teacher multimodal discourse will stimulate students’ interest inChinese College English Listening and Speaking Class. Secondly, the author tests outwhat effectiveness of students’ language acquisition in College English Listening andSpeaking Class will be brought by using teacher multimodal discourse. This researchinvolves six college English teachers, who come from Dalian University of Scienceand Technology, and their six classes, totally have200students. Through theclassroom observation, questionnaire, interview and testing, the results will beanalyzed and summed up.The findings of the research are as follows:1. In the Chinese College English Listening and Speaking Class, teacher multimodal discourse stimulates students’interest in language acquisition.2. Teacher multimodal discourse in different modeshas different effects on students’ language learning.3. According to the results, thefeatures of teacher multimodal discourse have been shown, and the strategies forChinese College English Listening and Speaking Class, which includes two samplesof teacher multimodal discourse, have been proposed.From the results of the research, there are some suggestions for the collegeEnglish listening and speaking teaching:1. One suggestion is that teachers shouldhave a balance between teacher multimodal discourse and students’ performance.2.The second suggestion is that teachers should provide teacher multimodal discourse ina suitable order, so it can stimulate learner’s interest and gather their attention.3. Theauthor suggests that teachers should improve the skills of making and using themultimedia facilities, and be familiar with the teaching materials and tools.There are some limitations in this research for several possible reasons. First,because the subjects in this research are just from one university, the generality of thisfinding is limited. Second, the time of this research is so limited. If the authorexpanded the research time, the findings would be more convincing and valid. Last,the data was not collected by video recording, but by recorder pen. But all in all, thefindings might contribute to the arranging of College English Listening and SpeakingClass in a certain degree, and benefit the students to improve their English listeningand speaking skills.