A Comparative Analysis Of Multimodal Pedagogical Discourses Between Expert And Novice English Teachers

It is found that the study of linguistic discourse is not enough for discourse studies.With the development of modern and scientific information technology,researchers at home and abroad begin to apply the theory of multimodal discourse to English teaching.At present,in English teaching,the study of multimodal discourse at home and abroad mainly have focused on the application of multimodal teaching mode to vocabulary teaching,reading teaching and writing teaching,listening teaching,grammar teaching in high school and the study of teacher multimodal discourse in classroom,but the research on teacher multimodal discourse mainly is in the university stage,and middle school stage is less,and most of corpus are from high-quality classes competition award-winning teachers’ teaching videos online.This study will use the method of comparative study to select the teaching videos of teachers in the normal teaching process,and conduct a comparative study on multimodal discourse analysis of pedagogical discourses between experts and novice teachers in senior high school.Pedagogical discourse also presents multimodality.Teachers’ non-behavior in class,such as gesture,gaze,distance,head movement,facial expression,and the use of PPT,are all meaning-making resources,which play an equally important role in classroom communication.Zhang(2009b:16)also points out that the use of multimodal resources in teacher’s classroom affects the teaching effect in a certain meaning,so it is necessary to study the teacher multimodal discourse in classroom.Based on Kress and Leeuwen’s visual grammar theory(1996:25),and Zhang Delu’s(2009a:28)framework of multimodal discourse analysis,as well as the relevant literature at home and abroad,the author uses multimodal annotation software ELAN to annotate the modes of expert and novice teachers’ reading classes in senior high school,aiming at comparing and analyzing the similarities and differences between expert and novice teachers using verbal modes,bodily modes,visual modes,auditory modes and classroom environment in class.This thesis takes two expert teachers and two novice teachers in senior one from Ling Shi senior high School in Jin Zhong county,Shanxi Province as the research subjects,and makes classroom observation on them to probe into the following two questions:(1)What is the overall distribution of the verbal mode,bodily mode,visual mode,auditory mode and classroom environments used by expert and novice teachers and in different teaching stages?(2)What are the differences in meta-functional meanings achieved by different distribution of modes for expert and novice teachers in each stage of teaching?Classroom observation data and results show :(1)Two types of teachers use with no the auditory mode.Expert teachers are better at using verbal mode,bodily mode and classroom environment,while novice teachers are better at using visual mode.In the teacher’s activity stage,both types of teachers use a large number of mode resources.In the period of checking old language point,the only expert teachers used the mode resources,and novice teachers just use the mode resources at the beginning of class stage.In introducing of topic stage,novice teachers are better at using than expert teachers.Expert teachers are better at using modes in teacher’s organizing activities stage and homework assignments stage,while novice teachers are better at using modes in finishing of class stage.(2)On the whole,expert teachers mainly use oral language,intonation,stress,pause,gaze and distance to achieve interactive meaning,mainly using gaze and distance to achieve representational meaning,while novice teachers mainly use oral language,intonation,pause,stress,speed,gaze,head movement,facial expression and gaze to achieve interactive meaning,mainly using distance,and gaze to achieve representational meaning,using PPT pictures and PPT pictures and text to achieve compositional meaning.Therefore,compositional meaning achieved by novice teachers is better,while representational meaning,interactive meaning by expert teachers are better,while the realization of compositional meaning is less.