A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Classroom Teaching Of Undergraduate English Major Programs

With the development and innovation of modern science and technology,great changes have taken place in the way people communicate.And the meaning of discourse can't be conveyed merely by pure language modes but through paralanguage modes,like fonts,intonations,etc.and non-language modes like gestures,smiles,pictures,etc.With language,paralanguage,actional and visual modes,the discourse in English classrooms is a typical multimodal discourse.However,current empirical studies of multimodal teaching in English classrooms are inadequate.Moreover,the studies of multimodal discourse analysis(MDA)of undergraduate English major programs,involving undergraduate English program,undergraduate translation program and undergraduate business English program are even rarer.Therefore,this study has attempted to make a multimodal analysis of three excellent teachers for undergraduate English major programs.The teaching videos of three outstanding teachers in the 9th SFLEP National Foreign Language Teaching Contest were taken as the research subjects.Both the qualitative and the quantitative approaches were applied with the help of ELAN video analysis software,aiming to answer what particular semiotic modes were used by teachers and how different semiotic modes integrated to construct ideational,interpersonal and textual meaning.Through considerate observation and careful study,major findings yielded were concluded as following:Firstly,pure language modes still played a dominant role in communication in classrooms of undergraduate English major programs.Beyond that,three teachers also applied other modes,including paralanguage modes,visual modes and actional modes.As for the paralanguage modes,teachers for undergraduate English major programs preferred to adopt different fonts as well as the changes of intonation to catch students'eyes.Concerning visual modes,the three teachers(Teacher A,B,C)used more videos,colors and pictures respectively to illustrate the teaching content.As far as actional modes were concerned,teachers for undergraduate English major programs all made full use of gestures and gazes,furthermore they were inclined to walk toward students to shorten the distance between teachers and students when interaction happened.Secondly,after analyzing the episodes the researcher selected,the researcher found that when constructing ideational meaning,some modes such as image and color which belonged to visual modality were more frequently used by the teacher for undergraduate English program and the teacher for undergraduate translation program.In respect of the teacher for undergraduate business English program,apart from the pure language modes,actional modes were the most frequently used modes to enhance the expressive effect when realizing the ideational function.With regard to the realization of the interpersonal function,paralanguage modality and actional modality were frequently used.Besides,the teacher for undergraduate English program and the teacher for undergraduate business English program adopted visual modality to facilitate students learning.When it came to the construction of textual meaning,all teachers made full use of information value,salience and framing in the PPT courseware.The placement of images,highlighting information,and the well-organized structure of the text all contributed to the realization of textual meaning.All in all,teaching is a process where teachers make full use of various modes to construct the ideational,interpersonal and textual meaning.Appropriate modes used in the teaching design can improve students'learning efficiency and the students'ability of multiliteracy so that they can adapt to cultural diversity and linguistic diversity.