A Study On The Application Of The Multimodal Teaching Method To English Listening Teaching In A Senior High School

Listening,is one of the basic language skills(listening,speaking,reading and writing)and plays a vital role in senior high schools.It is an important way of language input and it accounts for thirty scores in college entrance examination.However,most of the teachers tend to pay more attention to reading and grammar teaching while ignoring the importance of listening.In addition,in the listening class,various teaching resources are lacked.Not only does this make students lose interests of English listening learning but also leads to a phenomenon of poor listening ability among students.According to the requirements of the National English Curriculum Standards for Senior Middle School(Ministry of Education,2017),English teachers should be encouraged to use multimedia technology and abundant teaching resources to teach English listening so that they can help students understand the listening contents better.The multimodal teaching method is a teaching method that the teacher uses various semiotic resources and teaching channels to motivate students’ senses to interact with the external environment.So the main feature of this teaching method is the use of various modes and teaching resources.The multimodal teaching method includes four basic elements.Namely,the teacher,students,modes,and teaching environment.In the thesis,a multimodal teaching method is used to teach English listening in a seniorhigh school,which aims to examine its effects on students’ listening proficiency level and investigate students’ attitude towards this teaching method.According to the research objectives,three research questions are put forward.Namely:(1)Can the multimodal teaching method improve students’ English listening proficiency level in senior high schools?(2)What are the influences of the multimodal teaching method on students’ listening comprehension?(3)How does the multimodal teaching method affect students’ attitude towards English listening learning?The multimodal listening teaching model was designed to teach English listening based on the input hypothesis,constructivism theory,and multimodal discourse analysis theory.The participants of this research consisted of a total of 113 students chosen from two intact classes in Grade One in Tongren NO.1 Senior High School.One class was randomly selected as the Control Class(CC),and the other as the Experimental Class(EC).Experimental methods and literature research methods were used in this research.Before the research,a pre-test on listening was implemented to test students’ current listening proficiency level in the two classes.During the teaching experiment,the multimodal teaching method was applied to teaching English listening in the EC.While,the traditional teaching method was used in the CC,which was asking students to listen to texts and answer related questions,and then to check for answers together.After the research,the post-test wasimplemented to examine the effects of the multimodal teaching method on students’ English listening proficiency level.In addition,questionnaires and interviews were implemented to investigate the influences of the multimodal teaching method on students’ English listening ability and their attitude towards English listening learning.In this study,the results show that: 1)The multimodal teaching method is helpful to improve students’ English listening levels in senior high schools;2)The multimodal teaching method can affect students’ English listening comprehension ability,especially the ability of inferring speakers’ intentions,opinions,and attitude;3)The multimodal teaching method can exert a positive effect on students’ attitude towards English listening learning.It can stimulate students’ learning interests and motivation.Therefore,it indicates that the multimodal teaching method can be effectively used in practical listening teaching in senior high schools.