On The Correlation Between College English Teachers' Classroom Multimodal Discourse And The Enhancement Of Students' Learning Enthusiasm

Owing to the development of multimedia technology and the wide use of computer and the internet, College English Teaching is becoming more and more multimodal. Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) is a new subject based on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). According to SFL theory, language realizes three meta-functions which are experiential expressing the real world and the inner world experiences, interpersonal reflecting the language users'participation and interaction in social communication and textual showing the way the text is organized. From the perspective of MDA, besides language, other semiotic systems also realize the three meta-functions and take part in forming the specific textual meanings, possessing the quality of system, function and arrangement.This study is aimed at discovering the correlation between College English Teachers'Multimodal Discourse and the enhancement of Students'Learning Enthusiasm by analyzing college English teachers'classroom multimodal discourse based on the theory of MDA from the perspective of multimodal study in combination with the view of three meta-functions of SFL, the study of motivation, the charm of English teachers'personality and their encouragement to students. Questionnaires and internet voting are both used to get students'feedbacks. Classroom observation and the results of different teachers'practical teaching modalities used in different classes during a whole year were also recorded and analyzed quantitatively. The purpose of this study is to know more about the relation between college English teachers'multimodal discourse and students'learning enthusiasm in order to arouse the college English teachers'awareness of the importance of the form of their multimodal discourse in enhancing students'learning enthusiasm. The subjects of this empirical research consist of three groups of people. The first is the students of Ocean University of China in grade 2009; the second is the author's internet friends on Renren who are also all from OUC; the third includes the two sampled college English teachers and their students who chose to be in their classes for two semesters continuously and the number of students is 30 respectively.This study uses both qualitative and quantitative methods. During the qualitative study, theory probes, questionnaires, internet voting and classroom observations are all used to get the feedback of students and to analyze the relation between teachers'multimodal discourse and students'learning enthusiasm. On the other hand, for the quantitative study, SPSS11.0 Independent Samples T-Test is used in describing and analyzing the students'final results of different practical multimodal discourses used by the two teachers in different classes during a whole year.Statistics indicate that the influence of teachers'different classroom multimodal discourses on students'learning enthusiasm is not only shown in students'willingness in cooperation in class but also in the diversity of their final results(t=-0.542, p=0.590 / t=-2.156, p=0.035). The related study and statistics indicate that teachers'classroom multimodal discourse is an important factor in improving students'learning enthusiasm in college English teaching and show the most popular and favorable modalities in improving students'learning enthusiasm. The findings are significant to college English teaching.Although there are some limitations in this study, the writer uses several approaches and a scientific statistical method in the elaborative analysis of the correlation between teachers'classroom multimodal discourse and students'learning enthusiasm and offers a new trial for the study of college English teachers'multimodal discourse.