| In the era of new media,for English teaching purpose,the text done with only one dimension can no longer meet learners’ needs,since multimodal resources are gradually changing people’s thinking.The Senior Middle School English Curriculum Standards(2017edition)points out that the discourse should be presented in multimodal forms,and it is necessary to develop students’ language skills of “viewing.”“Viewing” is the ability to understand the meaning by using the graphics,tables,animations,symbols,and videos in multimodal discourses(The Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China,2017).The multimodal study on the textbooks can help the textbook users pay attention to the multimodal resources in textbooks,improve the use effect of textbooks,cultivate learners’ multimodal reading ability,and put forward some suggestions for textbook compilers.This study is mainly devoted to answering the following three research questions:1.What are the characteristics of multimodal resources in the FLTRP high school English textbooks? How do teachers and students evaluate multimodal resources in the textbooks?2.How do the images in the FLTRP high school English textbooks realize their visual functions?3.How do the textbooks reflect the complementary relationship between images and texts in the FLTRP high school English textbooks?The FLTRP high school English compulsory textbooks(book1-book3)published in 2019 are selected as the research materials.The textbooks of the new edition have abundant multimodal resources,and there is still no multimodal discourse analysis study on these textbooks,so it is of great value to study them.This study takes Kress & Van Leeuwen’s(1996)visual grammar and Royce’s(2007)theory of ideational intersemiotic complementarity as the theoretical framework.The quantitative and qualitative methods are used to analyze the modal resources in textbooks.In addition,the author puts forward some suggestions for teachers to carry out image-assisted English teaching based on the conclusions.The results of the research show that:1.Through the research,the author found that the FLTRP high school English textbooks(2019 edition)have the main characteristics of adding video resources,significantly increasing the teaching content about “viewing”,enriching discourse types,setting teaching instructions,and providing multimodal activities.The new textbooks strive to meet the requirements of the Curriculum Standards for the cultivation of the “viewing” ability.Through investigation,the author found that the multimodal resources in the textbooks can basically meet the aesthetic standards and teaching needs of textbook users.2.The images in the textbooks realize the functions of reproduction,interaction,and composition.Firstly,the representational meaning: the narrative representation appears more frequently than the conceptual representation.The representational meaning of the image is mainly realized by creating English learning situations and displaying English language knowledge.Secondly,the interactive meaning: the offer is the main type of contact;the distance mainly uses the social distance;power relation mainly presents the horizontal perspective of equal relationship.The image’s interactive meaning is realized mainly by changing the elements in images and showing the social interaction between characters.Finally,the compositional meaning: the image conveys the information value through the reasonable structure.The size,tonal contrast,brightness,and background of images are reasonable,and the image salience is great.Virtual framing is used to distinguish scenes.The compositional meaning of the image is mainly realized by adjusting the combination of elements in images and expressing different meanings.3.The images and texts in this set of textbooks have close complementarity,in which repetition and synonymy are dominant.The images and texts together construct a complete textual meaning.According to the research,the author found that the FLTRP high school English compulsory textbooks present distinctive multimodal characteristics.There are multiple modal resources,including the text,the image,the audio,and the video in textbooks.Among the non-text modality,the image is dominant.The proportion of video and audio resources is relatively small,and the two modalities are distributed in the fixed part.Among all kinds of image types,the number of cartoons is relatively large.Based on senior high school students’ thinking level and cognitive law,the author suggests that the number of cartoons should be appropriately reduced in high school English textbooks.Besides,through the questionnaire survey,the author found some problems with the use of multimodal resources in the textbooks.For example,some teachers have not yet attached importance to multimodal resources’ value,have not made full use of the multimodal resources in textbooks,and lack relevant guidance for viewing ability.It provides an improvement direction for us to strengthen the usage of multimodal resources and promote the cultivation of students’ viewing ability.This study can arouse teachers’ attention to the multimodal resources in textbooks,especially the complementary relationship between images and texts.It is conducive to using textbooks,improving teaching,and cultivating students’ multivariate literacy.In addition,according to the research conclusions,the author puts forward the teaching strategies to cultivate students’ viewing ability.The strategies are having a correct understanding of images’ value and function,strengthening the knowledge reserves,developing the habit of preparing images,strengthening the training of corresponding skills,mastering the methods of interpreting images,and using images to assist English teaching. |
