Effectiveness Of Multimodal Theory In English Grammar Teaching In Junior School

With the development of information technology, the foreign language teachingassisted by multimedia has become popular. However, the English teaching assisted bymultimedia has not given full play to its functions because of English teachers’ subjectivefactors and objective factors. Multimodal is that people can interact with the externalenvironment through their senses such as visual sense, audio sense, tactile sense, sense oftaste and so on. Three or more than three senses involved in the interaction can be calledmultimodal. The multimodal teaching advocates that the various symbols modal such aslanguage, images, music, internet, etc. should be introduce to the teaching procedure. Itshould mobilize students’ various senses to participate in learning in order to stimulatestudents’ associate memory. Nowadays, the multimedia teaching gradually becomesmultimodal. Since New London Group advocates the application of multimodality inlanguage teaching and cultivates students’ multiliteracies, multimodal has been noticedwidely in academic circles. Most researches on language teaching based on multimodaltheory in foreign countries are empirical studies of detailed subjects. Researches onlanguage teaching based on multimodal at home started late, and most researches aretheoretical. Grammar teaching is the basic of English language teaching. It is of greatimportance for language communication. But the current grammar teaching is mainlyused the traditional way. The teaching contents are boring, and students’ learning isineffective. The researcher constructs the multimodal grammar teaching model based onmultimodal theory under the circumstance of multimedia. The purpose is to test theeffectiveness of multimodal grammar teaching in junior school. The subjects in the study are students in grade two from Xiang Shui junior school inYulin city. There is no significant difference in the two classes. One class is arranged asthe experimental group which is taught by multimodal teaching. The other class isarranged as control group which is taught by traditional way. The teaching contents arethe simple past tense and simple future tense. The whole procedure of the study lasts forsix weeks. The aim of the study is to discuss the effectiveness of the multimodalgrammar teaching model in junior school.(1) Before the study, the researcher conductsthe questionnaire about the current situation of grammar teaching in the junior school.(2)The researcher has designed the multimodal grammar teaching model, and a pilot hasbeen carried out to test its reliability. Then, the experimental group is taught bymultimodal grammar teaching, and the control group is taught by traditional way. Afterthe teaching task in class, the immediate test is carried out in the two groups. Two weekslater, the delayed test is carried out in the two groups.(3) After the two tests, aquestionnaire and the subsequent interview should be conducted in the experimentalgroup. The scores in two tests and result of questionnaires are analyzed by SPSS17.0.The results are as follows:(1) The results of the pre-questionnaire show that the traditional grammar teaching3P model is still used as the main way in the experimental junior middle school. Moststudents have no interests to English grammar and their learning effect is minimal.(2) The results of the T-test in the two tests show that there is no significantdifference of the two groups in the immediate test (t=-2.350, P=0.022, P<0.05). In thedelayed test, there is also significant difference of the two groups (t=-2.050, P=0.044, P<0.05). The scores in experimental group are higher than the control group in the two tests.The multimodal grammar teaching is more effective than the traditional way of theacquisition of the target grammar points.(3) Results of the post-questionnaire and interview show that a majority of studentsapprove of the multimodal teaching. It can stimulate their interests to English, strengthen their confidence in English, improve language communication competence andstrengthen their cultural awareness. It is hoped that the multimodal teaching can be usedin English grammar teaching in future.According to the results, it can be concluded in the following aspects:(1) Thegrammar teaching should pay attention to students’ age, try to stimulate students’interests and cultivate students’ comprehensive abilities such as listening, reading,speaking and writing.(2) Multimodal teaching is helpful for students’ understanding andflexible use of grammar rules.(3) A majority of students keep positive attitudes tomultimodal grammar teaching. It is helpful for their grammar learning. It is hoped thatthe multimodal teaching model can be used in the grammar teaching in the future.