Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Excellent Teachers' Non-verbal Behaviors In Junior High School English Class

With the extensive and rapid development of science and technology,a new form of multimedia classroom teaching takes its shape.The meaning of discourse can not only be explained by mere language but through a wide range of non-verbal semiotic modes.Multimodality,which includes various semiotic modes in a communicative artifact or event,such as language,gesture,music,image,etc.can construct meaning.With actional,visual and auditory modes,the discourse of Junior High School English classes is a typical multimodal discourse.However,the researches on such multimodal discourse are inadequate.Therefore,this study tries to analyze the semiotic modes applied by excellent Junior High School English teachers from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis.(1)What kind of non-verbal semiotic modes do excellent Junior High School English teachers prefer to apply?(2)How do different non-verbal semiotic modes work together to construct representational,interactive and compositional meanings?This research took the 11th Session National English Demonstration Class in Junior High School as an example.Four excellent English teachers' teaching videos were chosen as the research subjects.Multimodal annotation software ELAN was employed to make the data more reliable and valid.The main modes used by the four teachers were collected through the observation of the four videos,and how meanings were constructed was expounded by the qualitative analysis.The major findings were as follows:Firstly,in addition to language modes,many other important modes were utilized to achieve teaching effect,including actional modes,visual modes and auditory modes.In actional modes,gesture,facial expression,gaze and distance were used by the four teachers.As for visual modes,pictures and word symbols were applied by the four teachers and videos were used only once by two teachers.With regard to auditory modes,spoken language symbols(speed,intonation,silence)were employed by the four teachers and music was used by two teachers.Secondly,the realization of representational meaning was more concerned with narrative process rather than conceptual process.Interactive meaning was generally constructed by contact,social distance and attitude.As for the compositional meaning construction,the PPT slides played an important role.The placement of pictures or word symbols and the adoption of arrows,underlines,color and fonts were mostly preferred by the four teachers.On the basis of the above findings,some pedagogical implications are put forward.On the one hand,from the perspective of teachers,it's of great importance to improve their awareness of applying different modes to teaching.On the other hand,with regard to students,they are supposed to develop the awareness of multiliteracies.If students' abilities of multiliteracies are cultivated,they could better understand the information transmitted by these modes.There were some limitations of this study:Firstly,the findings are not so convincing with the limited number of four sample teachers.Secondly,the subjectivity exists during the annotation process.Thirdly,the research results may not represent the real situations in normal classes.Here are some suggestions for further studies:Firstly,large scale of samples are expected to obtain more persuasive and valid results.Secondly,it's urgently needed to design and develop a more automatic annotation tool to make the annotation more convincing.Thirdly,research on multimodality in normal classes should be carried out so that a questionnaire or an interview can be conducted to acquire more reliable results.