A Study Of College English Multimodal Teaching

Teaching methods attach great importance to students, and they will influenceteaching quality. Traditional college English teaching method is monotonous, whichfocuses more on teachers’ explanation. In class, the primary tools are a chalk, a bookand a blackboard. There are few language communication activities, and thisintensifies the tendency of “spoon-fed” and “teacher talk only”, thus restrictsstudents’ creativity. The development of information technology promotescommunication media, which gives rise to the shift from monomodal teaching tomultimodal ones. Multimodality teaching method is first put forward by NewLondon Group in l996. Multimodality, as a theory of teaching, employs varioussemiotic resources, such as visual, sound, pictures, gestures, color and others, tobring more senses into cooperative operation to study language, thus the bestteaching effects will be achieved.The integrated research of multimodality and language teaching is still at its infantstage in China. Multimodal studies abroad and home focus more on theoreticaldiscussion; empirical studies need to be strengthened. This paper tries to make up forthe deficiency, combining the theory and empirical research together to bringmultimodal research findings into college English teaching class. The paper firstcovers a literature review on multimodality of both abroad and home. And then,based on Halliday’s systemic functional grammar and Kress and van Leeuwen’simage grammar, a model for the present study is proposed. Finally,multimodality-based experiment is done to verify the results of multimodal teaching.The research is conducted within one term (from September to December,2013) inMudanjiang Normal University. The participants in the research are two parallelGrade2013science class students from Mudanjiang Normal University. One class is majored in biology, the other majored in chemistry. With reference to universityentrance examination grades, parts of the students with equivalent grades are chosen(Class A30students&Class B30students) as participants of the research. Class A isexperimental class, in which multimodal English teaching method is used, whileClass B is control class, in which traditional English teaching method is carried out.At the end of the semester, a post-test is done. All the data collected will be analyzedby statistical software SPSS, thus a contrast and analysis between these two kinds ofteaching methods towards students’ studying effect is obtained. Finally,questionnaires are handed out to students in Experimental Class. The purpose of thequestionnaire design is to investigate students’ attitudes toward multimodal andtraditional teaching and the influence of two teaching modes on students’ acquisitionand self-learning ability and so on.Research results shows that multimodality can be applied to college English teaching,and it achieves better results than traditional teaching methods. By comparing resultsof pre-test and post-test, there are obvious differences between the experiment classand control class. Whether Paired-Samples T Test of two teaching methods inExperimental Class, or Independent-Samples T Test of two teaching methods in thetwo classes, the scores of multimodal English teaching mode are higher thantraditional teaching mode. Multimodal classroom offers many opportunities forstudents to participate in classroom activities, forming a competitive learningatmosphere. This competitive learning atmosphere becomes a driving force topromote students learning. Multimodal teaching method aids to cultivate students’autonomous learning and cooperative learning. In multimodal class, manymultimodal activities require cooperation and discussion among students. When theymeet difficulties, they can also help each other, discuss with each other, andcomplete tasks in cooperation. So, multimodal teaching methods will arousestudents’ learning interest, give full play to students’ initiative and improve students’English skills.