A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Teacher-student Interaction In High School English Reading Classes

Teaching is a dynamic process of emotional communication and two-way interaction between teachers and students.The quality of teacher-student interaction can reflect the teaching effect of this lesson.At present,English classroom has shown the characteristics of multi-modal interaction.In addition to using language to communicate with students,teachers can also rely on some non-verbal modes.However,in the real high school English reading classes,teachers only pay attention to the explanation of grammar and syntax knowledge in the reading teaching,and there are problems such as monotonous form of teachers’ discourse,low quality of interactive feedback discourse and lack of situational authenticity.Traditional discourse analysis mainly focuses on teachers’ language,while multi-modal discourse analysis also focuses on the role of gestures,postures,pictures and other non-verbal modes in teaching,so it can provide a more comprehensive analysis of teachers’ discourse.Based on the theory of systemic functional linguistics,visual grammar,multi-modal discourse analysis comprehensive framework and multi-modal interaction analysis theory,this study attempts to construct an analytical framework to analyze the multi-modal discourse interaction between teachers and students in high school English quality reading class.The research adopted a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods.ELAN was used to manually annotate and analyze 14 modes in classroom teaching videos and each lesson by second.The research questions are as follows:(1)How to construct a multi-modal discourse analysis framework for teacher-student interaction in high school English reading classes based on related theories of multi-modal discourse analysis?(2)Based on the analysis framework,what are the characteristics of the overall distribution of each mode in different teaching links of high school English reading class? What are the characteristics of the specific use of modes throughout the class?(3)How do different modes cooperate to achieve interactive meaning in high school English reading classes? What are the characteristics of teacher-student interaction presented in the perspective of multi-modal discourse?The findings are as follows:(1)High school English reading courses mainly include seven teaching stages,namely,the beginning,the introduction of the class,before reading,while-reading,post-reading,summary&homework,end.(2)There are some differences in the overall distribution of modes in different teaching stages.Teachers use the most modes in the while-reading and post-reading stages,followed by the before reading and classroom introduction stages,and the least modes in the beginning and end stages.In terms of mode selection,teachers mainly use linguistic modes and auxiliary nonverbal modes.In the language mode,the amount of teacher’s discourse is slightly more than that of student’s.Among the non-verbal modes,the action mode is the most used,followed by the visual mode and the environmental mode.(3)Generally speaking,teachers mainly adopt pure language and falling tone in class;Body distance is mainly informal and personal distance;Gesture are mainly deictic gesture and iconic gesture;Posture is mainly open posture;Expression is mainly smile;Eyes alternate between looking at the whole student and looking at individual students;The head shows directional movement;Visual mode is mainly PPT text and picture.(4)Teachers’ eyes,perspectives and distance between teachers and students have a great influence on the construction of interactive meaning,but other modes can also interact with each other,effectively conveying a kind of positive,friendly and positive interactive meaning.In different teaching stages of the classroom,the characteristics of teacher-student interaction are different from the perspective of multi-modal discourse.The purpose of this study is to provide a reference for teachers to reasonably use multi-modes in order to promote the effective realization of teacher-student interaction in the classroom.In terms of language mode,teachers should improve their oral English level,pay attention to the change of intonation,stress,rhythm,etc.,reduce the repetition of words,and create opportunities for students to speak.In terms of non-verbal modes,teachers should pay attention to the rational use of other modes besides language,display more symbolic gestures and open gestures,make more eye contact with students,keep smiling,give more encouragement and praise to students by nodding appropriately,and adjust and change the distance between them according to specific teaching situations,in order to realize the interactive significance in the teaching process.