A Comparative Study Of Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Chinese And British EFL Textbooks Of Junior High School

In the age of new media,discourse analysis never only focuses on the verbal discourse any more,but also on the visual images,color,image-text relation and layout.According to the latest English Curriculum Standard,discourses in EFL teaching are normally presented with multimodal resources.Consequently,students’ language skill of “viewing” should be cultivated,which refers to the language skills of using the diagrams,images,charts,symbols and videos in the multimodal discourses and then understanding the multimodal discourse properly.On the other hand,as the significant pedagogical resource,textbook plays a critical role in language teaching.Hence,it is indispensable to conduct multimodal discourse analysis on EFL textbooks.The author hopes to dig out and employ the multimodal resources in the textbooks and cultivate students’ ability of viewing.The author also attempts to provide suggestions for the editors of EFL textbooks meanwhile conclude some pedagogical implications.In this way,textbooks could better serve English teaching activities and both teachers’ and students’ multiliteracy could be improved.The domestic multimodal analysis researches of EFL textbooks include diverse levels,like college,middle school and primary school and all of them were published by domestic press,however,the amount of researches on foreign EFL textbooks isfew.On the other hand,the previous researches only focus on single or one set of textbooks.In order to highlight the distinct multimodal characteristics of different EFL textbooks,current research targets at and compares the reading sections of domestic and foreign EFL textbooks,from multimodal perspectives.The author adopts Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar as well as Martinec and Salway’s Theory of Image-Text Relation as the analytic framework.Under the purposed framework,the author compares and analyzes English in Mind by Cambridge University Press and Go for It by People’s Education Press comparatively.Both of the two sets of textbooks are representative EFL textbooks.The former is considered as the most influential EFL textbook globally,which is widely used by many domestic foreign language junior high schools.The latter is the most widely used EFL textbook in southwest area.Though exploring the meaning of visual modes involving images and the interactive relation between visual and verbal modes,the author hopes to dig out the different multimodal characteristics of the two sets of textbooks.In this way,students’ language skill of viewing and reading comprehension could be cultivated properly.More specifically,the current study aims to answer the three research questions:(1)In the reading sections of the two sets of textbooks,what are the similarities and differences of the way of meaning construction of visual modes?(2)In the reading sections of the two sets of textbooks,what are the similarities and differences of the relation between visual modes and verbal modes?(3)Through the comparison of the way of meaning construction of multimodal resources in the reading sections of the two sets of textbooks,what are the implications for both compilations of EFL textbooks and current English teaching?Based on the above research objectives,the current study,with classroom observations,interviews and questionnaires,employs the theoretical framework of multimodal discourse analysis to compare and analyze the reading sections of the two EFL textbooks qualitatively and quantitatively.Firstly,the author analyzed the reading section according to the three meanings of Visual Grammar and then compare the features of them.Secondly,the author explored the interactive relation of image and text in terms of the status of image-text.Finally,during the internship,the authorconducted classroom observation,interview and questionnaire in two schools.The results reveal that both of the two textbooks show appropriate multimodal features but English in Mind shows better multimodal characteristics.With comparative analysis,the author finds out that English in Mind has more distinctly multimodal features and the proportions of respective meaning of visual image are equally distributed as well as higher relevance of image-text relation,which provides more authentic and active education resource.These features are less conspicuous in Go for It.However,the survey shows that the visual modes in Go for It are more easily understood by domestic students meanwhile involves more affluent traditional Chinese culture,which is more agreeable for domestic EFL education.In addition,in reading teaching,diverse visual images are usually used in pre-reading stage in single form.The significance of the current research includes three aspects.In the light of English teacher,this research is favourable for properly understanding and further digging out the multimodal resources in their current textbooks,which could be employed in their teaching activities and improvement.As for students,the non-verbal visual modes in reading sections are beneficial for the activation of the previous knowledge and then develop into long-term memory.In this way,students are able to appreciate the meaning of multimodal discourses so that the ability of viewing could be increased.In terms of domestic textbook designers,the comparison of home and foreign EFL textbooks provides opportunities for them to draw on the experience of the affluent multimodal resources of the foreign textbooks.Therefore,it is necessary to compare the domestic and abroad English textbooks.Although the significance is noticeable,limitations still exist in the current study.For instance,the subjective factors cannot be ignored when the author categories the diverse multimodal resources and the limited focus upon reading section results less comprehensive exploration of the whole textbooks.