Multimodal Study On The Transition Of English Textbooks Of Jiangsu Edition From Junior To Senior High Schools

Multimodal discourse analysis,as an effective method in in-depth study of textbooks,incorporates language into the combination of other semiotic resources to discuss and explain the discourse.This thesis is a study of comparison and transition on two English textbooks of Jiangsu Edition for Grade 9 and two for Senior 1,on grounds of the three metafunctions in Systemic Functional Linguistics and Visual Grammar.Based on three metafunctions of representation,interaction and composition,the multimodal characteristics,text-image relationship in meaning construction and transitioning problems have been explored.There are three problems needs to be solved:(1)What are the differences in text difficulty between the four books in terms of vocabulary,sentence and discourse? Whether there is a good transition in terms of vocabulary,sentence and discourse?(2)What are the multimodal characteristics and their differences in meaning construction in four textbooks? Whether there is a good transition in terms of multimodal characteristics?(3)How can images be interpreted to facilitate readers' understanding of multimodal discourse in the four textbooks based on the framework of three metafunctions of Visual Grammar?The part of text difficulty resorts to corpus research methods,using WordSmith Tool 4.0 and Range 32 to measure “Text Readability” from length of word,sentence and discourse,difficult word distribution and lexical density.Quantitative method also goes to analysis on multimodal characteristics in textbooks,including type and proportion of image,type of text block,image location,etc.Qualitative research is to illustrate the how it comes about that the text and image construct meanings together by sample interpretation.Conclusions can be drawn from data analysis:(1)The textbook difficulty transitioning,in general,from Grade 9 to Senior 1is appropriate.Out of four,Textbook Module 1(M1)is lower on lexical difficulty and density than the two books for Grade 9.(2)In terms of multimodal characteristics,the two textbooks for Senior 1 are“user-interest oriented” and “topic-oriented” while the two for Grade 9 are“organization-oriented” according to the percentage of image type and distribution.There is consistency in type of text block among these four textbooks.In layout,the proportion of image occupying the upper space of a page accounts for the largest in two textbooks for Grade 9,but it is the other way around in the two for senior 1,which means the information provided by images in senior 1 textbooks is comparatively more concrete,neutral and real.(3)20 samples selected from the four textbooks proves the universal applicability of Visual Grammar framework to multimodal discourse analysis on English textbooks.In representation and explanation of meaning,multiple modes are more effective.These are some implications for practical teaching:(1)To cultivate students' multiliteracy,teachers should be flexible in teaching method choosing after fully understanding the multimodal characteristics and their differences in textbooks.For proper transitional teaching,teachers need to realize the difficulty discrepancy between textbooks for junior and senior high school.(2)To better adapt themselves to senior grades,it is necessary for students to adjust their learning methods in English study and foster their multiliteray in English reading.Learning to deal with text with different modes should be one of the basic skills of students in this age.(3)To keep up with new curriculum reform,compilers ought to make updates regularly,taking both text readability and multimodal characteristics into consideration.