Application Of Multimodality To Teaching College Art Students English Reading

To improve students’ reading ability is one of the fundamental requirements for college English teaching. However, many art students are not interested in reading English and lack motivation to learn it. Even teachers may lose enthusiasm to teach them English. As a result, teaching art students English reading is inefficient.Nowadays, application of multimodality in teaching English has attracted many researchers’ attention and art students can perceive various modalities well. Therefore,in this research, the author applies multimodality to teaching college art students English reading and attempts to answer the following research questions: 1) Is the application of multimodality to teaching college art students English reading effective? 2) Are students satisfied with this new teaching model? If so, in what aspects does it affect students’ English reading?An experiment is carried out in two parallel classes for a whole term. In the experimental class, multimodality is applied in teaching reading and teaching procedures are all designed according to the theory of elements of designing multimodality and the maximum effectiveness principles while in the control class, ordinary multimedia teaching is applied. The data of a pre-test, reading quizzes, a post-test and an attitude questionnaire are analyzed by SPSS 16.0. The research finds out that on the one hand, the application of multimodality in teaching college art students reading is indeed effective but designing multimodal teaching procedures should be scientific and reasonable; on the other hand, multimodal teaching is more popular among art students for it can help activate classroom atmosphere, inspire students’ motivation to read after class and build up their confidence in learn English, especially English reading.The author provides the following suggestions for college English teaching based on the research findings. 1) teachers should give priority to students’ features while selecting teaching models; 2) designing multimodal teaching procedures should never be random and teachers should obey the theories of elements of designing multimodality and principles of selecting multimodality; 3) teachers should take advantage of students’ active psychological state to teach English and lay greater emphasis on teaching design than on class rules; 4) teachers should realize their proper roles in multimodal teaching and play such roles as the designer, the organizer, a director and facilitator.