A Multimodal Analysis Of Visual Resources In English Textbooks For Junior High School Students (Oxford Version)

As the students' learning resources and tools, textbooks play an important role in achieving the teaching goals and learning efficiency in junior high schools. They are necessary tools used while students learning at schools. So do the English textbooks. With the fast developments in multimedia technology, the contents and types of the English textbooks have undergone dramatically changes. There are no more single texts in the English textbooks, but various pictures, music, video, PPT and some other multimedia resources. Hence, the ability to recognize and understand multimodal resources in English textbooks and to use these resources properly is directly related to the success and failure of English learning.This thesis takes the Reading part in English Textbooks for Junior High School Students (Oxford Version) as the research object, and uses the theory of multimodality and Halliday's systemic grammar and Kress and Leeuwen's visual grammar as the theoretical basis, to do an intensive reading of the selected discourse. By adopting the method of multimodal discourse analysis, the author did a detailed analysis of the major forms of visual modes/resources in the textbooks and tried to answer the following questions:(1)How are representational, interactive and compositional meanings represented by the images in Reading section in English Textbooks for Junior High School students (Oxford Version)?(2) How are representational, interactive and compositional meanings represented by the layouts in Reading section in English Textbooks for Junior High School students (Oxford Version)?(3) How are representational, interactive and compositional meanings represented by the colors in Reading section in English Textbooks for Junior High School students (Oxford Version)?After the collection and analysis of the data, the present study has some findings as follows:Firstly, the majority of the images in the six textbooks are narrative representation, which is made up of narrative representation and conceptual representation. Narrative representation can be subdivided into action process, reaction process, speech process and mental process. Most images in the six textbooks involve the action process and reactional process which take up 80% of the whole. The representational meaning of image is mainly conveyed through the location of the modes to reflect the characters and events. The location is divided into top and down, left and right, central and marginal.Secondly, the information value is embodied by the space occupied by different elements. In the six textbooks, the main body of the text occupies the largest area on the paper. That shows that the main body of the text is the most important. Other elements like images are placed around the text. That is because they are less important and their function is to help the passages to be understood by readers better. From the aspect of salience, text in each unit occupies the most areas of the page. The font is black and at the same time the background colors are mainly white or light colors. There is a clear distinction between the text and background. By doing this, the compilers convey to readers that their purpose is to highlight the text and make the text prominent. From the aspect of framing, there are three kinds of relations between the text and image:separation, segregation and integration in the texts in the Reading section of the six English textbooks.Lastly, through the Reading section in the six English textbooks, the author found the various colors are widely used to realize representational, interactive and compositional meanings. There are two main functions of those colors:1) Differentiation function. The text part of the article uses black, the title of the color is blue, purple, etc., so that the title can be separated from the main part of the article.2) Evaluative function. Different colors are employed in the textbooks to convey different emotions:The red color normally entails enthusiasm or joy, and the black color calm, formality or mystery. Actually, the tone of color, in this manner, coordinates with the content of texts, which make themselves better understood by readers.The above findings have some implicational meanings.In the first place, teachers should change their teaching methods and pay close attention to the multi modes used in the textbooks. There are all kinds of social semiotics such as text, images, and sound in multimodal discourse. The key to understanding the multimodal discourse is to learn to interpret the meaning of social semiotics. As a matter of fact, other than the printed textbooks, there are other teaching materials such as videos, records and PPT which belong to multimodal discourse. Teachers should utilize these materials properly and help students learn the lesson better.In the second place, it is necessary to cultivate students' ability in multiliteracy and develop their capacity of dealing with multimodal discourse by taking various forms. After the analysis of the multimodal discourse, it can be seen that every element used in the textbook can express some meanings. In modern society, students inevitably have to do with the multimodal discourse. According to the New London Group, multiliteracy is not only the traditional idea that students have to improve their listening, speaking, reading and writing ability, but the cultural, visual, auditory and gestural ability and technology literacy and information literacy. Teachers should cultivate students' awareness of multiliteracy and gradually improve their comprehensive ability.At last, this thesis also has certain enlightening function on textbook compiling. Textbook compilers should reasonably arrange the multimodal resources in the textbooks according to students' cognitive ability. In this way, textbooks can truly play its role in the course of students' learning.