The Application Of The Multimodal Teaching Model To The Teaching Of English Reading In Higher Vocational Colleges

With the continuous deepening of teaching research and the rapid development of educational technology,the Multimodal Teaching Model has increasingly attracted scholars' attention at home and abroad,and gradually influences teaching in colleges and universities(the New London Group,1996;Terry Royce,2002;Hu Zhuanglin,2006).A lot of researches have shown that the new teaching model plays a crucial role in arousing learners' interest and promoting the effectiveness of English teaching(Gunther Kress,2001;Zhang Delu,2015).Currently,there have been extensive discussions and studies about the Multimodal Teaching Model on vocabulary,listening,speaking,and reading(Gan Luoyang,2012;Zhang Delu,2013;Guo Wanqun,2015),taking non-art majors in colleges as subjects.However,few researches on English reading of art majors are involved,especially those art majors in higher vocational colleges.By teaching practice in classroom,the author find out that art majors can adapt to various modes in reading well.This study makes an attempt to investigate the effect of the Multimodal Teaching Model on students' English reading,analyze the problems in the application of this teaching model and to put forward solutions by taking 94 sophomore art majors in Xinjiang Teacher College as research subjects,based on the Theory of Multiliteracies Pedagogy and other achievements related to multimodal teaching at home and overseas(the New London Group,1996;Zhang Delu,2015).The research questions addressed in this thesis are:(1)How do the students evaluate the Multimodal Teaching Model?(2)How does the Multimodal Teaching Model affect students' English reading scores?(3)What problems may exist in the implementation of the Multimodal Teaching Model? And how to solve them?Multimodal Teaching Evaluation Scale,interview,test paper and student's diary are applied to collect data in this study.All the collected data is analyzed with the help of software SPSS19.0.Through quantitative and qualitative analysis,the results are presented as follows:(1)According to the analysis of Multimodal Teaching Evaluation Scale used in reading class,except for linguistic modes(minimum percentage=44%),most of art students(70%)in EG tend to have positive evaluations of other modes.Therefore,the majority of students can accept the Multimodal Teaching Model in English reading class.(2)After the four-month training of the Multimodal Teaching Model,EG's reading scores are significantly improved compared with those of CG's(P=0.00(<0.05)).CG's reading scores(mean=10.98)have also increased compared with before the experiment(mean=10.95),but not obviously.(3)According to the analysis of students' diaries,there exist some problems in the implementation of the Multimodal Teaching Model,such as unclear modal meanings,inappropriate PPT designing,improper arrangement of class activities,monotony of teacher talk,etc.The author tries to propose some solutions based on the feedback of the students' dairies,such as giving adequate explanation to meanings of different modes,following the Principles of Multimodal Selection,encouraging students to engage in multimodal design,turning to the experienced teacher,deeply analyzing of reading contents and teaching objectives,properly arranging class activities,etc.On the basis of the research results above,the author puts forward the feasible pedagogical suggestions on EFL learning and teaching,for the purpose of promoting teachers to effectively implement the Multimodal Teaching Model in reading class and to improve students' reading ability by creating a diversified learning environment.