An Empirical Study On The Application Of Multimodal Theory To English Vocabulary Teaching In Rural Primary Schools

Vocabulary plays a significant role in English learning,but most English teachers in rural primary schools still adopt traditional methods to teach students vocabulary,resulting in that students feel it boring and difficult to memorize new words,and even lose interest in English vocabulary learning.In order to change the current situation,the author attempts to apply multimodal theory into English vocabulary teaching.Multimodal vocabulary teaching method,which is based on multimedia,means to combine words,pictures,music and so on together to participate in the process of vocabulary teaching and mobilize students' multiple senses so as to help them memorize vocabulary more effectively.The multimodal vocabulary teaching experiment in this study lasted for 10 weeks to test the effectiveness of multimodal vocabulary teaching.The subjects were99 students of Grade Five from a rural primary school in Shaanxi Province.50 students in one class were regarded as the experimental group(EG)and 49 students in another class were regarded as the Control group(CG).And students in the two classes had similar English levels.In this thesis,the author adopts both qualitative and quantitative research methods as well as interviews,questionnaires and tests as the experiment tools.After the experiment,the author collected the data and analyzed them through SPSS 16.0.The main findings are: 1)Nowadays in rural primary schools,some English teachers haven't realized the importance of vocabulary and some still adopt traditional teaching methods to teach students new words though they know the significance of vocabulary,under which students can't memorize and master vocabulary effectively.2)Multimodal vocabulary teaching method not only helps to enhance students' vocabulary learning interests,but also helps to change their motivations and negative attitudes towards English vocabulary learning.3)Multimodal vocabulary teaching method can effectively improve students' English vocabulary learning effects.It helpsto improve most students' English vocabulary scores.What's more,some pedagogical implications are provided in this thesis as well.First,teachers should try ways out to cultivate students' learning interests.Second,teachers should often use multimedia for teaching.Third,teachers should organize interesting class activities as many as possible.Lastly,teachers should combine multimodal teaching method with traditional teaching method in their teaching practice.