The Impact Of Multimodal Discourse In College English Classroom On Students’multiliteracy

Since the 1990s, with the development of multicultural communication and Information & Communication Technology (ICT), people have been in a world with a variety of communication channels such as videos, advertisements, pictures and cartoons. Accordingly, this leads to a status change of language in mass communication and breeds the appearance of multimodality, i.e. various meaning-making means and semiotic resources combining human’s sensory experience for communication and interaction between human and the surroundings.Nowadays, we are living in a multimodal society in which we construct meanings through integrating all kinds of semiotic resources including auditive, visual, tactile, behavioral and linguistic symbols. Language is not the only way of constructing meanings. The newly issued document The Requirement for College English Curriculum (Ministry of Education,2007) claims that college English teaching should aim at promoting students’ communicative competence and independent study ability with good usage of ICT. College English teaching shows great difference from the traditional teaching method. Contemporary college English teaching is characterized by multimodal discourse in preparation and process of teaching. As a result, it is of great necessity to get a better understanding of multimodal discourse in college English classroom so as to conduct an effective teaching process and to enhance students’ multiiteracy, i.e. enhancing the ability to interpret multimodal information and further cope with a wide array of resources in order to pick out what is needed and even to re-produce more. Therefore, a study on how to integrate and coordinate multimodal resources is indispensable.In this regard, multimodal discourse analysis rising in the 1990s facilitates the research between multimodality in classroom and multiliteracy. Zhang (2012) claims that multimodal discourse is a unity of meaning, form and referent. To dig out the relation between multimodality and multiliteracy, multimodal discourse analysis paves a way for analyzing multimodality. It is known that multimodal discourse is the discourse that realizes the purpose of communication through the interaction of different semiotic modes which include language, dynamic and static visual images, music, sound, electronic media, film, print etc. (Liu,2013). And Systemic Functional Grammar provides a theoretical basis for multimodal discourse analysis with three metafunctions of language including ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. Afterwards, an integrated analysis model will be given to analyze teachers’multimodal discourse and the relation with students’multiliteracy learning.The thesis resorts to a quasi-experimental design and makes a comparison between treatment group class episodes with multimodalities and control group class episodes with fewer modalities in college English. Through an analysis based on metafuncions and open-ended interviews, the thesis finally unravels the relation between multimodality and multiliteracy. This thesis aims to answer the following research questions:what modalities teachers frequently used in college English teaching; which modality has great impact on students’ multiliteracy; and how a teacher integrates and coordinates various modalities to facilitate effective teaching and to enhance students’ multiliteracy learning. As a result, more pedagogical implications will be given to future college English teaching. In case studies, three representative comparisons of teaching processes are to be analyzed in detail to show the research and analysis process. These teaching processes are conducted by two female teachers in college English courses for the freshmen in Institute of Physical Education and College of Fine Arts in a certain university in Chongqing. With reference to Systemic Functional Grammar, a comparison of three groups of class episodes will be analyzed:an Intensive English-Reading exercise explaining with multimodal resources as the treatment group and one with fewer modalities as the control group; a Listening Course with integration of multimodality as the treatment group and the other one mainly with audio resources as the control group; a Speaking Course with multimodal resources such as videos, pictures, etc. as the treatment group and one mainly with linguistic modality as the control group. An open-ended interview is conducted for teachers and students. After class observation and analysis of interviews and students’assignments, it is found that the appropriate coordination of different multimodal discourse leads to an effective English teaching and helps to improve students’multiliteracy learning. Then some feasible suggestions are given to college English teachers so as to improve the teaching process and enhance students’ multiliteracy learning. In the sense, the thesis is of practical value, which offers college English teachers an effective and convenient way of teaching.