A Study Of The Multimodal Teaching Approach In The Teaching Of English Reading In Senior High Schools

With the proposal of new English Curriculum Standard and the implementation of new scheme of College Entrance Examination,English reading has played an increasingly important role in senior high school English learning.How to cultivate students' English reading ability effectively has become the focus of numerous front-line English teachers.However,there are always some problems in the real senior high school English classroom teaching.For example,due to the old teaching concept and single teaching method,students' English reading interest and learning initiative are not strong,the classroom atmosphere is depressing and the class teaching is inefficient,all of which lead to the embarrassing situation that the teacher talks much while the students learn little.Naturally,it's difficult for students to improve their reading achievements.Therefore,it is urgent for teachers and significant for students to find an effective way to teach and learn English reading.In the new media era,modern network technology and multimedia technology are widely used,and the non-verbal mode plays an increasingly important role in both literary and colloquial communication.Under this situation,the theory of multimodal discourse analysis has emerged.The theory of multimodal discourse analysis is based on systemic functional linguistics and socio-semiotics.This theory advocates combining linguistic symbols with non-linguistic symbols such as gestures,music,images,video,motion,color,facial expressions,etc.,and analyzing the discourse meanings of various symbols from a holistic perspective.The theory believes that besides language,other semiotic resources can also be used to communicate and improve learners' competence.Recently,the theory of multimodal discourse analysis has been widely used in educational practices and a new teaching model based on this theory,namely,multimodal teaching approach,has gained increasing attention among vast scholars and educators.Multimodal teaching approach advocates the use of various modalities in classroom teaching for the purpose of mobilizing learner's multiple sensory organs to work together,stimulating their initiative,improving their participation and promoting their understanding of knowledge to the maximum extent.Multimodal teaching attaches importance to students' use of multiple sensory channels to receive the information and knowledge from teachers in order to improve their learning effect in an active and relaxing learning atmosphere.This study aims to explore whether the application of multimodal teaching into senior high school English reading classroom will improve the classroom teaching efficiency effectively,and ultimately improve students' English reading scores and comprehensive language ability.The study focuses on the following two questions:(1)What problems have senior high school students encountered in their English reading?(2)What effect does the application of multimodal teaching approach have on senior high school English reading teaching?To answer these questions,the author conducted a three-month teaching experiment in Huachang Senior High School,Liaocheng city from September 2019 to December 2019.The research subjects are from the two classes in senior grade one.Class One is the experimental class(EC),adopting the multimodal teaching approach;Class Two is the control class(CC),adopting the traditional teaching method.The main research instruments include test,questionnaire and interview.Before the experiment,a pre-test is conducted in both the EC and CC to learn the students' current English reading levels,and to figure out whether there is obvious distinction between EC and CC in their English reading scores.Next,a pre-questionnaire is carried out in the EC to gather the information about the students' current situation of English reading learning.Then,a pre-interview is conducted in the EC to get more about the students' problems in English reading learning and analyze the reasons,and then know their attitude toward the traditional reading teaching method.After the experiment,a post-test is conducted in the EC and CC at the same time to know the change of students' English reading achievement.Next,a post-questionnaire is carried out in the EC to figure out the teaching effect of the application of multimodal teaching approach in the English reading classroom.Finally,a post-interview is conducted in the EC to know students' opinions on and evaluation of the multimodal reading teaching approach.SPSS 20.0 is used to analyze the data of the pre-test and post-test.The result shows:(1)Senior high school students do encounter some problems in their English reading learning,such as low English reading interest,poor foundation of English reading comprehension and incorrect use of reading techniques and strategies.(2)Multimodal reading teaching is effective in stimulating student's learning interest and enthusiasm in English reading,improving students' classroom behavior,boosting students' use of reading technique and strategy.Besides,multimodal teaching approach can also effectively improve students' reading achievements and reading proficiency.Students' English reading performance under the guidance of multimodal teaching approach is significantly better than that under the traditional teaching method.In a word,multimodal teaching approach has a positive impact on the teaching of English reading in senior high schools.The results of this research provide the following references for the English reading teaching of senior high schools.Firstly,English teachers are supposed to be good at using various multimodal resources,updating their teaching concepts actively,providing a relaxing and friendly learning atmosphere,and creating a harmonious teacher-student relationship.Next,students are supposed to be good at mobilizing their own multiple sensory organs and taking active part in the classroom activities so as to be the master of learning.