A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of English Reading Classes By Excellent Senior High School Teachers

The main characteristics of contemporary society are increasingly theorized as global,fluid and networked.The shifts and developments have tremendously affected the communicational landscape of today which is characterized by multimodaltiy.A key aspect of it is the effective reconfiguration of the communicational resources of images,sound,action and so on to transmit information.The terrain of communication is changing and profoundly influences classroom teaching and classroom discourse analysis.Traditionally,classroom discourse analysis was closely related to language or text in class.However,multimodal discourse analysis takes multiple communicative modalities into account,which includes the verbal and nonverbal behaviors of teachers because they are all meaning-making resources.Therefore,this paper takes three excellent senior high school English teachers as research subjects to examine the general situation of modality use in the reading classes through classroom observation,hoping to shed some light on English classroom teaching at senior high school.Bases on Social Semiotics,Visual Grammar and Zhang Delu's multimodal discourse analysis theory,the research questions addressed in this paper are:1)What is the general situation of modality use in the reading classes designed by excellent senior high school English teachers?2)What meta-functional meanings are achieved by different modalities in the reading classes designed by excellent senior high school English teachers?3)How do different modalities work together to construct the meta-functional meanings in the reading classes designed by excellent senior high school English teachers?Both quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted,with the qualitative method being dominant.For the former,ELAN,a multimedia annotation tool,is used.For the latter,the meta-functional meanings of each modality are analyzed at first.Then the relationship between different modalities and the meta-functional meanings achieved are studied.The major finding are as follows.Firstly,besides verbal modalities,nonverbal modalities,including bodily modalities,visual modalities,auditory modalities and classroom environment are used by teachers in the three videos.Secondly,different modalities express different meanings,including representational meaning,interactive meaning and compositional meaning.Thirdly,the relationship between different modalities falls into two categories:complementary relation and noncomplementary relation.In general,speech usually acts as the main modality except when the videos of the PPT are displayed on the screen.Gaze,facial expressions,head movement,proxemics,the combination of images and texts and classroom environment usually form complementary relation of reinforcement of extension with speech.Furthermore,the relationship between gestures and speech belongs to complementary relation of reinforcement of subordination.Finally,the relationship between visual texts and speech falls into the noncomplementary relation of overlapping or complementary relation of reinforcement of highlighting.When the embedded video is the main modality in class,the relationship between the sound of the embedded video and images of the video is complementary relation of nonreinforcement of coordination.The music and the speech of a narrator in the video form the complementary relation of nonreinforcement of coalition.In view of the findings,this paper puts forward some pedagogical implications for teachers.Firstly,teachers should pay attention to the use of other nonverbal modalities including bodily modalities,visual modalities,auditory modalities and classroom environment.Furthermore,teachers should choose modalities according to their teaching contents and teaching objectives.Finally,teachers should increase the awareness of designing entertaining and informative PPT.