An Empirical Study On The Multimodal English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

English vocabulary teaching at senior high school as the main part of English teaching affects students’ proficiency of English directly. However, the hardship of vocabulary memory, the tedium of the vocabulary lessons and the new curriculum standard all present challenges to English vocabulary teaching. The theory of multimodality based on the systemic functional linguistics advocates employing multiple modalities to get better communicative effect. Recently its guidance on teaching has aroused much attention.Under this background, the thesis focuses on applying the multimodal theory to vocabulary teaching at senior high school and makes qualitative and quantitative research to check the efficiency of multimodal vocabulary teaching. Three research questions are presented in this thesis:(1) What is the current situation of English vocabulary teaching in senior high school?(2) Is multimodal vocabulary teaching more effective than traditional vocabulary teaching on improving students’ English vocabulary scores?(3) What kind of influence dose multimodal vocabulary teaching have on students’ English learning?A two months research is carried out at Lecong middle school in Shunde city Guangdong province. 27 English teachers and 80 students from two parallel classes in grade one are selected as subjects. Two parallel classes, which have 40 students respectively, are chosen as experimental class and control class randomly. The experimental class is taught vocabulary with the multimodal vocabulary teaching method while the control class is taught by the traditional way. By analyzing the relevant data collected form the experiment, conclusions can be reached in the following three aspects.(1) The traditional vocabulary teaching way dominates the senior high school whose effect is not satisfied.(2) Multimodal vocabulary teaching is more effective than traditional vocabulary teaching on improving students’ vocabulary scores.(3) Most students hold that multimodal vocabulary teaching has positive influence on their English learning.The multimodal vocabulary teaching proves to be effective to improve the efficiency of English vocabulary teaching at senior high school. However, this research has some limitations due to the restrictions of the practical conditions, such as the small sample size,the short research time and uncontrollable variables. Further studies remain to be done.