Effect Of Multimodal Narrative Teaching On Students' Vocabulary Competence In Junior High School

Vocabulary competence plays an extremely important role in second language learners' language proficiency.In recent years,multimodal teaching has attracted much attention from researchers because of its various modes of language input and its impact on learners' language competence.Some scholars have integrated multimodality and narrative means to construct multimodal narrative teaching and have also carried out relevant researches.However,the application researches on primary and secondary school students are relatively few.In this study,81 students from two parallel classes of Grade 8 in a junior high school in Henan Province were selected as subjects.Through the English proficiency test and the pretest of vocabulary competence,the experimental group and the control group were selected.Both the two groups were divided into different levels of groups.Multimodal narrative teaching was implemented in the experimental group while the control group adopted traditional teaching.The experiment lasted for 10 weeks.The vocabulary competence was measured in terms of vocabulary recognition,wordspelling and lexical grammar.This study aims to reply the following question:1.How does multimodal narrative vocabulary teaching affect junior high school students' English vocabulary competence in general? How does it affect students' vocabulary recognition,word-spelling and lexical grammar?2.How does multimodal narrative vocabulary teaching affect different level group students' English vocabulary competence in junior high school?3.What are the attitudes of junior high school students towards multimodal narrative vocabulary teaching? What attitudes do students of different level groups have towards this vocabulary teaching?4.What are the attitudes of junior high school English teachers towards multimodal narrative vocabulary teaching?Findings are as follows:1.Multimodal narrative vocabulary teaching has a positive effect on junior high school students' English vocabulary competence in general.It can significantly improve the overall English vocabulary competence of the students.Among the three different dimensions of vocabulary competence,multimodal narrative vocabulary teaching has the most prominent positive impact on junior high school students' English vocabulary recognition ability,followed by lexical grammar.Multimodal narrative vocabulary teaching also has certain advantages in students' word-spelling,but the advantages are not obvious.2.Multimodal narrative vocabulary teaching has a positive impact on the vocabulary competence of all the students of different levels.For high-level students,multimodal narrative vocabulary teaching has played a positive role in improving their vocabulary competence in all of the three aspects.It has similar advantages in improving their vocabulary recognition and lexical grammar.Between the two aspects,the scope of improvement of lexical grammar is slightly higher.As for word-spelling,the influence is relatively weak;For medium-level students,the influence of multimodal narrative teaching is greater in lexical grammar than in vocabulary recognition.However,there exists no remarkable effect on word-spelling of the medium-level group students.For low-level students,multimodal narrative teaching has the greatest impact on vocabulary recognition,followed by lexical grammar,and has no significant influence in the improvement of word-spelling ability.In terms of vocabulary recognition,multimodal narrative vocabulary teaching has the greatest improvement on low-level students,while high-level and medium-level students have the similar scale of improvement;in terms of word-spelling,it has the greatest impact on high-level students,while the medium-level and low-level students accepted almost the same degree of positive influence;in terms of lexical grammar,it has almost the same scale of influence on both medium-level and low-level groups,while the improvement of the high-level students is the smallest.3.Students of different levels all have a relatively high acceptance of multimodal narrative vocabulary teaching.They all hold the opinion that this teaching mode has largely raised their interest in vocabulary learning and effectively improved the efficiency of vocabulary acquisition,especially of vocabulary recognition.The highlevel students believe that the teaching method has strengthened their awareness of vocabulary learning in context and helped them improve their ability to use vocabulary correctly and appropriately;the medium-level students think that the teaching method has helped them to learn the meanings of the words while mastering the usage of them;the low-level students believe that the teaching method has greatly increased their confidence in learning English vocabulary,has helped them alleviate the anxiety of vocabulary memorization and has assisted them in mastering the correct form and appropriate context when use vocabulary.However,the students of the high-level group hope that the intensity of vocabulary learning per unit time can be slightly improved;the students of the low-level group hope to be given more guidance and training in word-spelling.4.The teachers,one teaching the two groups during the experiment and two attending the classes in the experimental group,believe that multimodal narrative vocabulary teaching can stimulate students' interest in learning and improve the efficiency of classroom vocabulary acquisition.The use of narrative means and the design of real contexts can improve students' lexical grammar level,and strengthen students' awareness of using vocabulary in context.The teachers interviewed unanimously mention that students' awareness of correct spelling should be enhanced and more spelling exercises should be conducted;moreover,in the choice of teaching materials and modes,students' original knowledge structure and practicality of the materials should be fully considered.This study provides some enlightenments for English vocabulary teaching in junior high school.In vocabulary teaching,we should pay attention to the use of multiple modes and different mode combinations,integrate the target vocabulary into the situations as much as possible through narrative means,and construct consolidation and output effectively.It is an effective and beneficial teaching method for learners to improve vocabulary competence and to form good vocabulary learning strategies.