A Study On The Application Of Multi-modality In English Demonstration Classes Of Junior High Schools

With the advent of modern information era, Multimodal Discourse Analysis has caused widespread concern of domestic and foreign scholars in recent years. Multimodal Discourse Analysis is based on system-functional linguistics, which analyses a text or a communicative event with two modes or more than two modes of the different semiotic modes. It mainly includes five aspects: culture context, situation context, meaning level, lexical grammar and media level. Recent years have witnessed rapid development of both theoretical exploration and application in China. In theory, it is mainly about the introduction and evaluation of foreign theories. In practice, most researches focus on multimodal analysis of teaching materials, classroom designs and teaching methods of college English. However, the application of modality research in junior high school English classroom teaching is almost blank. With the deep integration of information technology and curriculum, it’s becoming very common for teachers to use multi-modality in middle or primary schools; but they know little about multimodal theories. This thesis uses multimodal discourse analysis theory framework to analyze the application of verbal modes and nonverbal modes, the role of each mode and the complementary relations of different modes, etc. This thesis is to discuss how teachers use their own language advantage, body movements and other effective modes to optimize the classroom teaching effect and how teachers make use of the complementary relationships between different modes so as to improve English teaching efficiency.This thesis mainly studies the following questions: 1.What key modes do the demonstration class teachers use during the classroom teaching? What role does each mode play? 2. Is there a kind of complementary relationship between the auditory modality and the visual modality? 3. What are the differences and similarities in the use of multi-modality between male teachers and female teachers?The research subjects are 31 teaching videos from the 10 th Session National Junior High School English Demonstration Classes. The research method is mainly the observation method. The research instrument is the video annotation software ELAN.The major findings are as follows: 1.In classroom teaching, teachers can apply multi-modality to the teaching, such as the auditory mode, the visual mode, the behavior mode and the environment mode. Moreover, each mode plays a very important role: they can provide a real language environment for students and let the student quickly understand teaching content; as a teaching assistance, they can attract students’ attention with the animation, art words and pictures etc. in PPT; 2.In most cases, there is a kind of complementary relationship between the auditory mode and visual mode, which is often the reinforcing one of complementary relationships.3.In the use of multi-modality, male and female teachers have similarities in facial expressions and body language etc. They are obviously different in tempo, intonation, stress and other aspects. Most female teachers prefer fast tempo, rising tone, and stress, while most male teachers use slow tempo, falling tone and less stress.The following suggestions are put forward: 1. English teachers should pay attention to their own professional accomplishment. 2. A teacher needs to have the consciousness of multi-media and use modern teaching media, such as PPT, video and other means of simulated context to improve teaching effect. 3. English teachers should read more books about multimodal teaching, enrich themselves with the theory constantly, understand the role of each mode and strengthen their relationships between the visual and auditory modality to improve teaching effect. 4. Collaboration should be strengthened in teaching area among the technical personnel, teachers and researchers. 5. As for teachers’ gender differences, teachers should overcome their own shortcomings, and learn advantages of other teachers. As a result, they can form their own teaching style and have each class well.