An Analysis Of Multimodal Discourse In Primary School High-quality English Classes From Visual Grammar Perspective

With the development of the new curriculum reform,we have found that multimodal discourse teaching is increasingly suitable for English classes teaching.In the classes teaching,the comprehensive use of teaching multimodalities can be more conducive to language teaching.It also makes teachers and students more productive in sharing knowledge and communicating.Compared with foreign and domestic teaching practices,foreign teaching using multimodal theory is more mature.In China,the use of multimodal theory in colleges is relatively more,but it is even rarer in primary and secondary schools,especially in primary English teaching.This study is based on the visual grammar of Kress & Van Leeuwen(1996).Through comprehensive and systematic multimodal discourse analysis of high-quality English classes in primary schools,this thesis aims to explore the use of multimodality in primary high-quality classes,the overall features of the classes,the features of use at different teaching stages of the classes,and the role of various modal resources in the process of meaning construction in the English classes.This will effectively improve the teaching efficiency.To achieve the above research objectives,this study sets up three research questions: 1.What are the fratures in the overall classes of the high-quality English classroom in primary schools? 2.How are modalities distributed in different teaching stages of primary school high-quality English classes? 3.How do multimodal discourses construct meaning in primary school high-quality classes from the visual grammar perspective?This study adopts a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods and randomly selects ten lessons from the observation activity of “The Tenth National Primary English High-Quality Classes” in 2021 as the corpus source to establish a small corpus.The classes observation method is adopted in this study,and the corpus is coded and labeled with the help of multimodal video annotation software ELAN(6.4)to obtain corresponding charts for analyzing the features of modal use.Additionally,speech transcription is carried out according to teaching fragments,and the construction of different multimodalities for meaning is analyzed.Findings of research: 1.The three modalities used in the primary English quality classes are visual modality,auditory modality,and action modality.In the overall classes,teachers use the action modality most frequently throughout the classes,followed by the visual modality,and the auditory modality least frequently.2.The data is labeled to show that the three modalities are used differently in the four teaching stages of classes introduction,new teaching,practice,and summary and homework.The frequency of using the three modalities is the highest in the new teaching stages,followed by the introduction stage and the practice stage,and the lowest in the summary and homework stage.3.A reasonable combination of modalities can build the reproductive,interactive and compositional meanings of visual grammar.The reproductive meaning is achieved by using different modal resources such as language,images,and text.The interactive meaning is mainly constructed by visual and action modalities such as eye contact,teacher-student distance and perspective.The compositional meaning is constructed by information value,salience and frame,mainly in the visual modality of ppt and board words.This study can draw the following enlightenment: in primary English teaching classes,teachers can choose different multimodalities for teaching at different teaching stages while paying attention to the use of action modalities and using more body language to communicate with primary school students.