Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of English MOOCs:A Systemic Functional Perspective

Multimodal discourse analysis on English teaching emerges with the development of science and technology and has become one of the hottest research topics in the field of discourse analysis.This study focusing on the multimodal discourse analysis of English MOOCs is an attempt to find out what are the distribution characteristics of multimodalities in MOOCs,and to help learners use MOOCs to learn English effectively.Another focus of this study is to figure out what are the relations and meta-functions of different modalities in MOOCs in order to help teachers to create an accurate teaching plan in the classroom.Three research questions were addressed in this study:(1)What are the distribution of different modalities in English MOOCs?(2)What are the relations among different modalities in English MOOCs?(3)How are various meta-functions achieved by different modalities in English MOOCs?The basic theoretical foundation of this study is Systemic Functional Grammar.At the same time,Kress and Van Leeuwen' Visual Grammar(1996),Zhang Delu's Synthetic Theoretical Framework of MDA(2009)and Norris's nine communicative modalities(2004)were applied to answer the three research questions.Fifteen English MOOCs form Coursera and edX were downloaded.According to Zhang Delu's Synthetic Theoretical Framework of MDA(2009)and Norris'Framework of Multimodal Interaction Analysis(2004),a coding scheme of nine layers is established for annotations with the aid of Elan,a tool for multimodal discourse analysis.After the annotation,the distribution of different modalities in English MOOCs are examined,and it has been found that both visual modality and auditory modality play an important role in English MOOCs.The combination of visual and auditory modality is the most common teaching method in English classes,and teachers of MOOCs tend to apply these two modalities in the process of teaching to help their students learn English effectively.In addition,the proportion of different modalities in different teaching steps was also examined in lead-in section,presentation&explanation section and summary section.Then,the relations of different modalities and the ways in which different modalities are used to construct meaning in MOOCs were investigated.It has been founded that the relations of different modalities are complex and diverse.The relations of highlighting,grading,expanding,overlapping,associating,coordinating,and insourcing are all explained with examples in this research.Finally,the meta-functions achieved by different modalities are analyzed form three points of view:representational meaning,interactive meaning and compositional meaning,each of which is analyzed and illustrated with examples.The three meta-functions are indispensable in the meaning construction process in English MOOCs.Through the multimodal discourse analysis of English MOOCs,some suggestions on how to apply multimodalities in English classes are put forward.Teachers can modify teaching modalities regularly,using different modalities according to different teaching purposes,and constructing an interesting and attractive class,to guide students to learn English effectively.