A Study Of The Effects Of Multimodal Teaching On Primary School Students' English Vocabulary Scores And Classroom Anxiety

Vocabulary is fundamental to language,and vocabulary learning is essential to developing language skills.This subject has been widely studied in recent years.The English curriculum standards for primary school students require that students master 600-700 words and about 50 phrases.In addition,language learning requires a lot of input.Therefore,a great variety of curriculum resources are particularly important for English learning.Considering the demands of teaching and learning,English courses should provide English learning resources close to students' life and the time,and teachers should proactively use television,video and audio equipment,radio,and network information to expand the channels for students to learn and use English.Based on the theoretical framework of multimodal discourse analysis,the multimodal teaching uses various multimodal symbols to stimulate all senses of students in study and inspire them to memorize vocabulary and to produce associations at the same time,which enhance the memory effects.Consequently,teaching vocabulary with multimodal teaching in primary school empirically is of great significance.In this study,multimodal teaching can be defined as a new and effective teaching approach in which teachers adopt multiple teaching methods such as vocabulary games,group tasks and role play to mobilize the enthusiasm and initiative of students to participate in classroom teaching interaction.At the same time,various modal resources such as languages,pictures,music,realia,gestures and videos are utilized to attract the attention of students and arouse their interest in learning English and enliven classroom teaching.This empirical study attempts to investigate the effects of multimodal teaching on students' English vocabulary scores and classroom anxiety in primary school in comparison with the traditional vocabulary teaching method.The following research questions are put forward in this thesis:(1)What are the effects of multimodal teaching on primary school students' English vocabulary scores?(2)What are the effects of multimodal teaching on primary school students' English classroom anxiety?(3)What's students' attitude towards the multimodal vocabulary teaching?The author conducted a 16-week experiment in Yinchuan No.4 Primary School from March 2018 to July 2018.The research subjects were 96 pupils in Grade 4 in Class 2 and Class 4.There were 48 students in each class.In Class 2,there were 25 boys and 23 girls,and Class 4 consists of 24 boys and 24 girls.Class 2 was randomly set as the experimental class while Class 4 was randomly set as the control class.In the experimental class,the author adopted the multimodal vocabulary teaching,and the author resorted to the traditional vocabulary teaching method in the control class.Scale,tests and interviews were used for the study.All quantitative data collected were analyzed by means of SPSS 22.0.Besides,NVivo 10 was used by the author to analyze the qualitative data to find out the supportive reasons for the quantitative results and explore students' attitude towards multimodal teaching.The research results reveal that:(1)Multimodal teaching has a positive effect on primary school students' English vocabulary scores and it is also helpful in arousing students'interest.(2)Multimodal teaching method alleviates students' English classroom anxiety more effectively.According to the interviews,the reasons are the improvement of the classroom atmosphere,the improvement of communication-attentiveness and the improvement of learning interest.(3)Students hold a positive attitude towards multimodal vocabulary teaching.According to the interviews,they are more likely to choose multimodal vocabulary teaching rather than traditional English vocabulary instruction.In the study,there still exist some limitations including the small sample size and the limited research instruments.Thus,in future studies,the sample size can be enlarged,and more teachers and students can be involved.The class observation can also be used in future studies.This thesis includes five chapters.Chapter one is the introduction of the research background,significance and structure of the study.Chapter two reviews the application of previous studies of multimodal teaching in English vocabulary teaching.The theoretical framework is also discussed in this chapter.The third chapter is about research methodology.The fourth chapter is about the results and discussion of the experiment.The last chapter is the conclusion of the study,which includes the major findings,implications,limitations and suggestions of the study.