A Multimodal Discourse Analysis On Teachers’ Images In Videos Of Foreign Language MOOCs

Since 2012,the number of MOOC learners and courses has been increasing steadily.MOOC has provided learning opportunities for learners all over the world with thousands of courses of multi-disciplinary,multi-language,and multi-form.In recent years,language MOOCs began to be available on the main platforms at home and abroad,providing abundant language teaching resources for Chinese higher education institutions.It is important to design high-quality video lectures,which are the key elements of language MOOCs.Several studies have found that the presence of teacher’s images has an impact on students’ engagement.This paper analyzed the production styles of 37 national quality online courses,and found that there are mainly four recording scenes,including live classroom,office,studio and virtual studio.Seven video clips were selected to do further analysis based on the platforms,course content,school reputation,learner’s evaluation,and production styles.A questionnaire was conducted to explore students’ preference for the presence of teachers’ images in MOOC videos.186 answer sheets were collected from six universities in China with opportunity sampling.Then,based on Professor Norris’ Framework of Multimodal Interaction Analysis,the author annotated the communicative modes applied in the seven videos with the assistance of the software ELAN in order to find out how these communicative modes work together to coconstruct meanings.Both linguistic and non-linguistic modes were taken into consideration in this research.In the end,an interview was conducted to get a better understanding of key points of video design.The main findings can be concluded in three aspects:(1)The results of the questionnaire show that 86.44% of the students believe that teachers should be present on camera.And informal production styles are considered to make them feel more interactive.(2)The results of the interview show that the most engaging production styles are studio and virtual studio,in which teachers are required to be fluent in language,and generous in posture.The type of live classroom is not suitable for online learning.The type of office is unattractive because the teacher’s posture is too stiff.(3)The results of multimodal annotation illustrate that the application and distribution of communicative modes are quite different in different videos.All the modes combine together to construct meaning.Spoken language are superordinate to other modes.Stress,gestures and head movements are used to reinforce the meaning of the words.Layout and proxemics show the degree of formality and intimacy of the social situation.The modes applied in the videos should be compatible with the teaching content.The significance of this paper is exploring the optimal way of presence of teachers’ images in language MOOCs from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis.This study not only broadens the study field of multimodal discourse analysis,but is helpful in video design of MOOCs.The mode distribution and adoption in the seven popular language MOOCs can serve as a reference for the design and improvement of MOOC videos in the field of language teaching.