Study On Application Of Multimodality In Junior High School English Vocabulary Teaching

With the development of globalization,all countries in the world are becoming closer and closer together.English is not only an official language in the world,but also an important tool for ordinary people to communicate with foreigners.As a result,more and more people attach great importance to the study and use of English.Only if students enrich their vocabulary and achieve proficiency in diction can they improve their integrated linguistic skills.So,effective vocabulary teaching is an important part of English teaching.Vocabulary teaching is also the foundation of junior high school English teaching due to its great significance in improving students' four linguistic skills(listening,speaking,reading and writing).However,through the author's investigation,a number of teachers in junior high school still adopt the traditional teaching approach,which has caused lots of problems,such asrote learning and reducing students' enthusiasm.In recent years,many scholars pay much attention to multimodality,yet the study about English vocabulary teaching based on the theory of multimodalityis still in infancy.Multimodality refers to the communication conducted by languages,images,sounds and semiotic resources on the basis of multiple senses(auditory,visual and tactile sense,etc.)(Zhang,2009).Multimodality applied in English vocabulary teaching requires teachers to master the operation of multimedia devices and properly design teaching contents with images,sounds,animation and other materials,so as to arouse students' learning interest and bolster their memory effect.Therefore,the author tried to apply multimodality to English vocabulary teaching of junior high school.The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of vocabulary teachingand learning.The empirical research was conducted in a junior high school.The 112 students from Class 3(as control group)and Class 4(as test group)in Grade 8 were enrolled in the control test.Multimodal vocabulary teaching and traditional vocabulary teaching were applied in control group and test group respectively with the research tools of interview outline,test papers and questionnaires of English vocabulary teaching.The personal interview with English teacher of Grade 8 was the practical basis of this study.Pre-test and post-test were adopted in the two classes before and after the teaching experiment.The results thereof were used to analyze the teaching effect of the two approaches in acquiring target vocabulary via SPSS18.0.In addition,through the research of multimodality theories combined with junior high schoolEnglish vocabulary teaching,the author designed a questionnaire for 56 students in test group(Class 4)and provided an investigation report of practical significance for this study.Through interviews with teachers,comparative analysis of students' English vocabulary test results before and after teaching experiment,this study found: firstly,multimodal vocabulary teaching outshines traditional English vocabulary teaching and is conducive to improving students' English learning;secondly,multimodalvocabulary teaching is favored by students and can promote their learning enthusiasm and effect by appropriatecoordination of multiple senses.This paper proposes the followingsuggestionsfor junior high schoolEnglish vocabulary teaching based on the study results: to deepen students' memory of learned vocabulary by inputting multimodal semiotic information;to arouse students' interest and enthusiasm in learning vocabulary;and to improve student' capacity of word usage by creating real linguistic situations.