Construction And Application Of College English Multimodal Corpus

As a computer-assisted language learning tool, multimodal corpus collects audio, videoand other multimedia materials as data base, provides a full picture of language use inphonetics, semantics and pragmatics and thus has great potential in promoting Englisheducation (Jiao,2010:72). Based on a review of relevant theories and research progress ofmultimodal corpus construction and its pedagogic application, this paper elaborates on theconstruction of a multimodal corpus with Elan software, and explores into its possibleapplication in college English instruction in six aspects, including vocabulary, listening,speaking, writing, culture and multiliteracies. Under the guidance of Data-driven learningtheory suggested by Tim Johns(1991), three separate empirical experiments are conducted toexplore the pedagogic effectiveness of multimodal corpus-driven learning method invocabulary teaching, listening and speaking teaching and writing teaching；At the end of eachempirical experiment, an interview is carried out to evaluate students‘attitudes towards theuse of multimodal corpus in English classes.According to the results of the empirical studies, the multimodal corpus does benefitstudents in improving their vocabulary depth knowledge, improving their learningenthusiasm in listening and oral classes as well as enhancing their overall writing proficiency.Meanwhile, certain disadvantages of applying multimodal corpus in pedagogy are putforward, such as: its time consumption, complicated concordancing operations and deviationsof its teaching contents from formal college English tests.The study demonstrates that the construction of multimodal could update teaching ideasof college English education and further strengthen students‘comprehensive capacity, thus itis of great significance for college English education reform. Meanwhile, the disadvantagesof multimodal corpus in pedagogy should not be ignored. In conclusion, the widespread useof multimodal corpus in language study still needs the consistent effort of linguists andcomputer scientists.