A Practical Exploration Of The Cultivation Of College Students' Media Critical Ability Based On Symbolic Trinomial

College students are the leaders of the future participatory media society.Thus,the cultivation of college student's media literacy has been received extension attention.Although college students already have some media experience,the phenomenon of deviation of information interpretation and weak ability of information judgment still exists in college students.Media critical ability is a comprehensive skill,including the ability to perceive media information,the ability to decode media information,the ability to analysis media information,the ability to response media information,and the ability to judgment media information.The cultivation of student's media critical ability can enhance students' ability to evaluate and judge the media information.The theory of “sign-signifier-signified” are usually used as a scaffold to interpret information and a tool to represent information in media literacy education.The profound interpretation from signifier to signified can help to improve audience 's ability of decoding,analyzing and judging media information.Thus,the theory of“sign-signifier-signified” provide a possibility for the improvement of college students' media critical ability.In line with this,the current study attempts to use the theory of “sign-signifiersignified” to explore the cultivation of college students' media critical ability.First,the current study designed teaching strategy prototype that promote media critical ability based on the theory of “sign-signifier-signified” based on the previous teaching strategy prototype that promote media critical ability and the guidance of theory,including semiotic-cognitive communication theory,semiotics of communication theory,and cooperative learning theory.Then,teaching strategies prototype were conducted in the undergraduate independent development course "Visual Culture and Media Literacy" of Nanjing Normal University.Six thematic contents relating to the excellent traditional Chinese culture were selected to conduct three rounds of iteration of classroom teaching activities,and gradually modified and improved the strategy prototype.The revision of each round of strategies was based on the comprehensive evaluation of students' assignments,classroom observation and interview data.After three rounds of strategy implementation and modification,three main strategies were finally summarized :(1)selective interpretation of cases: strengthen the awareness of media criticism;(2)optimize the teaching process: create an environment for the improvement of media critical ability;(3)deep interpretation of the evaluation criteria of students “signsignifier-signified” assignments: deepening the ability of media criticismThe overall effectiveness of teaching strategies was mainly evaluated by the questionnaires of student's media critical ability and learning satisfaction,students' assignments,and the data of classroom observation,etc.From the experimental results,it can be seen that the teaching strategies of promoting media critical ability based on“sign-signifier-signified” has achieved obvious effectiveness.According to the analysis results of the questionnaires,including media critical ability scale and learning satisfaction scale,the participants' media critical ability has been significantly improved,and the students' learning satisfaction has also been positively changed.From the results of students' assignments and interviews,students believe that their ability to interpret media information in breadth and depth,to analyze information and to express information has been improved by using the theory of “sign-signifier-signified”.This study provided some practical reference for the research on the cultivation of media critical ability.Meanwhile,the scale of media critical ability also provides some reference for the research related on the evaluation of media critical ability.