An Analytic Study On Multimodal PPT In Junior English Classrooms

Multimodal discourse analysis,based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics,is a popular topic in the field of foreign language research in the last decade.With the development of technology and teaching practice,multimodal discourse analysis has combined with multimedia teaching.Multimedia teaching,especially the application of PowerPoint,has been widely used in English classrooms.The multimodalition can provide new ideas and inject new vitality for the design and application of PowerPoint,and Multimodal PowerPoint can be achieved through the interaction of various symbolic resources.Multimodal PowerPoint combines multiple modes,such as text,image,color,and sound,to produce meaning,which accords with the characteristics of students’ learning.It is beneficial to attracting students’ attention on information from multiple channels,enhancing language input,and improving teaching effect to a certain extent.Nowadays many English teachers have concerned about how to design a high quality multimodal PowerPoint,and how to develop the PowerPoint’s advantages to train students’ comprehensive language application ability.This paper aims to have a knowledge of the real situation of multimodal PowerPoint in junior English classrooms and to explore the types of multimodal PowerPoint,its effectiveness and existing problems.What’s more,this paper also provides some suggestions for the design and the application of multimodal PowerPoint according to the existing problems.Based on multimodal discourse analysis theory,constructivism theory and input enhancement theory,this paper applied sample analysis method,classroom observation and the interview to analyze the collected multimodal PowerPoint.After analyzing the statistical results,this paper has classified the multimodal PowerPoint from the perspective of discourse type and modal type.Depending on the discourse type,the multimodal PowerPoint is divided into prompt type,direct view type,analytic type and persuasive type.According to the mode type used in the PowerPoint,it mainly includes the visual mode and the auditory mode.Visual mode includes text mode,picture mode,picture + text mode and graph mode;auditory mode includes text recording mode,music mode and PowerPoint effect sound mode.After that the paper summarized the effectiveness and existing problems of multimodal PowerPoint.In the matter of effectiveness,multimodal PowerPoint can stimulate students’ senses,and improve students’ initiative and enthusiasm in the English class.Secondly,it contains graph,text,sound,image and so on,which can help to create the situation of language teaching.Thirdly,since the information is presented and noted in various ways,it can enhance the quality of the information input.There are three main problems in the design and application of multimodal PowerPoint.Firstly,the mode type used at English class was a little single.The visual mode was the most used,while the proportion of auditory mode was small.Secondly,the source of picture,text,music and other materials used in PowerPoint is narrow,and the their quality should be improved.Finally,the text layout,color matching,background setting in some multimodal PowerPoint are not suitable,and problems exist in some details.Finally,the paper put forward some suggestions on the design and application of multimodal PowerPoint based on the survey results.First of all,the teacher should pay attention to the coordination of the variety of modes.Teachers can choose the appropriate mode by considering teaching content and students,and try to avoid two extremes of too much single mode and excessive modal changes.Secondly,the channels of materials should be diversified,and the teacher should pay attention to their accuracy when used in PowerPoint.Finally,the paper gave suggestions from the text layout,color matching and background setting,and also suggested that the teacher should improve their own multimedia technology and master PowerPoint design skills.