A Multimodal Analysis Of English Teachers’ Classroom Instructions In Rural Junior High Schools

Teacher instructions are not only a tool for teachers to organize and maintain the classroom,but also a source of language input for students,which is a prerequisite for effective classroom teaching.With the rapid development of information technology,teacher-student communication is not only limited to "pure language",but also contains a large amount of multimodal information,so it is of great significance to focus on rural teacher development and rural classrooms from a multimodal perspective.Based on Zhang Delu’s comprehensive theoretical framework of multimodal discourse analysis,this study examines teachers’ classroom recordings from four rural junior high schools in southeast,south,southwest and western regions of China from a multimodal perspective.Using ELAN6.4,the video annotation software to note teachers’ and students’ verbal and non-verbal behaviors and SPSS for data analysis.The purpose is to explore the types of instructional sentences,characteristics of teachers’ instructional language,and multimodal interactions in English classrooms of rural areas.The research questions are as follows:(1)What are the characteristics of instructional language modality in rural junior high school English classrooms?(2)What are the characteristics of non-verbal modalities of classroom instructions in rural junior high school English classrooms?(3)Are there exist resonance effects between instructional language modality and non-verbal modalities in rural junior high school English classroom?Through classroom observation and analysis of multimodal data,it is found that:(1)In general,teachers are able to use different kinds of instructions according to teaching processes and teaching tasks.Mostly,teachers of rural junior high school tend to use the "bold" and "omitted" forms of imperative sentences and teachers’ verbal expressions are a bit fixed.Secondly,in terms of directive sentences,teachers usually use the most direct "naked" style,which is efficient and concise,but sometimes teachers ignore students’ faces.Teachers tend to use "exploratory" questions to guide students,enhance teacher-student interaction,and provoke deeper thinking;teachers’ instructions are mainly used as "commands";teachers prefer to give instructions while presenting relevant task instructions on PPT;as for instruction strategy,teachers mainly use Chinese to explain the task or use short sentences to check students’ comprehension.Finally,there also exist some problems like fuzzy expressions,fast speaking speed and giving too many instructions at the same time,which sometimes make students hard to understand.(2)There are abundant non-verbal modalities in rural classrooms: teachers mostly maintain an informal distance from students,and their emotions are always calm;the presentation methods that they used are mainly PPT text and pictures;their body postures mainly switch between walking and standing still.(3)There exist resonance effects between English teachers’ classroom instructions and nonverbal modalities in junior high school of rural area.Resonance networks and resonance probability coefficient tables based on labeling frequency and labeling duration show high resonance between teacher discourse,teacher silence,student silence,emotional state of sunny and calm,formal distance,directional head movement,While-task stage,PPT text,PPT text and pictures,and standing still.Teachers’ instructional speech is the primary modality,while nonverbal modalities play a complementary,supportive,and reinforcing role.At the end of this study,relevant teaching suggestions are given to enhance the effectiveness of English classroom instructions in rural junior high schools for enriching the study:(1)Teachers should improve their comprehensive language ability and enrich multiple instructional expressions;(2)Teachers need to reasonably choose multimodal resources in each teaching session;(3)A democratic and equal classroom atmosphere is expected to be provided to promote harmonious teacher-student relationship and cultivate students’ self-consciousness;Teachers need to continuously accumulate the experience of teaching and improve their teaching level.