An Empirical Study On English Vocabulary Teaching Based On Multimodal Theory In Junior Middle School

The National English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education puts forward higher requirements for junior middle students' vocabulary knowledge and application ability.Hence,vocabulary should be given priority in English teaching.However,the traditional vocabulary teaching method used in junior middle school has not achieved satisfactory results.Meanwhile,Multimodal Theory which advocates the coordination of various resource symbols to mobilize the cooperation of multiple senses for meaning expression comes into being.The virtue of its unique advantages plays an indispensable role in English teaching.Therefore,this study applies Multimodal Theory to junior middle school English vocabulary teaching,trying to explore the effects of vocabulary teaching based on Multimodal Theory,and to answer the following three research questions:Question 1: To what extent does vocabulary teaching based on Multimodal Theory affect vocabulary short-term memory and long-term memory?Question 2: To what extent does vocabulary teaching based on Multimodal Theory affect vocabulary proficiency?Question 3: To what extent does vocabulary teaching based on Multimodal Theory affect vocabulary knowledge depth?To answer the above questions,the author conducted a teaching experiment from September 6,2019 to December 27,2019 in NO.13 Middle School in Jinzhou,Liaoning Province.Experimental participants were 97 students from two parallel classes in Grade 7.Class 2(48 students)was designated as the control class(CC),using the traditional vocabulary teaching method.Class 6(49 students)was regarded as the experimental class(EC),adopting the vocabulary teaching method based on Multimodal Theory.Before the teaching experiment,students accepted the pre-test on vocabulary.During the experiment,students were taught for four months and took three vocabulary memory tests.After the teaching experiment,they took the post-test on vocabulary and an interview.Subsequently,the author used SPSS data analysis software to analyze the collected quantitative test data,and combined the qualitative information collected by the interview to explore the answers to the research questions.The experimental results illustrated that vocabulary teaching based on Multimodal Theory was helpful for vocabulary memory,and it significantly affected long-termmemory but not short-term memory.Additionally,this teaching method also had a significantly positive impact on students' vocabulary knowledge learning,both in terms of vocabulary proficiency and vocabulary knowledge depth.Vocabulary teaching based on Multimodal Theory emphasized the synergy and cooperation of various symbol resources,making the presentation of vocabulary knowledge diversified,intuitive and vivid.This method not only facilitated students' vocabulary knowledge understanding,but helped them to deeply process vocabulary knowledge to improve the vocabulary memory.Therefore,vocabulary teaching based on Multimodal Theory had a positive impact on junior middle school vocabulary teaching.In addition,some pedagogical implications and suggestions are put forward according to the research results and the whole research.It is hoped that the study of this paper will provide useful help for the related research of Multimodal Theory in vocabulary teaching.