An Empirical Study On Multimodal English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Newest curriculum standards proposes that English learning in senior high schools includes five basic skills,listening,speaking,reading,writing and viewing.Argumentative Writing,for teachers and students,which is exactly a hard nut to crack.Argumentative writing teaching in senior high school is based on construction and application of language,and focuses on cultivating students’ critical thinking abilities,so that students can better make their thinking contents into language expression.At present,there are some common phenomena in argumentative writing teaching.Teachers tend to pay more attention to teach grammar and fixed sentence patterns to students,but ignore the cultivation of students’ critical thinking abilities and some other parts.The atmosphere in class is boring and dull,where students don’t have interest to learn new knowledge.Through studying a variety of research outcomes from other scholars,multimodal writing teaching can improve this situation to some extent.This kind of teaching mode can make full use of audios,videos and other mode resources to mobilize students’ multi-sensory work together.Meanwhile,it can let students understand theme of writing better and improve their initial attitudes,in order to reach the purpose of promoting their language expression.There are a lot of studies on multimodal teaching at home and abroad,but there are few studies on how to specifically apply it to real writing teaching,especially in senior high schools.Therefore,in order to improve attitudes and ability of English argumentative writing of senior high school students to a certain extent,the researcher tries to verify that multimodal writing teaching method applied in English argumentative writing in senior high schools can improve students’ writing abilities to some degree.Thus,it can provide some teaching enlightenments for English teachers at the front line.Based on the Multimodal Discourse Theory and the Input Hypothesis and Output Hypothesis,this study aims to verify two following questions by using two research methods: writing test,questionnaire: 1)What effects does using multimodal writing teaching to teach argumentative writing have on senior high school students’ English writing levels? 2)What effects does using multimodal writing teaching to teach argumentative writing have on senior high school students’ attitudes towards English argumentative writing? The research subjects of this research are two parallel classes in a senior high school in Suzhou,with 21 students in each class.During the experiment,two classes are taught by the same teacher.Class A as experimental class uses multimodal writing teaching,while Class B uses traditional writing teaching,as comparative class.According to the data collected,the research finds that:1)To some degree,multimodal writing teaching can promote argumentative writing level of senior high school students.Multimodal writing teaching does help in focusing of writing theme,enriching students’ writing content and promoting students’ language expression accuracy.Compared with scores of students in Class B,the scores in experimental class after experiment have been improved obviously.2)To a certain extent,multimodal writing teaching change senior high school students’ attitude.Senior high school students have positive attitudes towards multimodal writing teaching.Students are fond of the modes of presenting writing theme and are interested in forms of enriching writing content,which all stimulate their interests in learning.But multimodal writing teaching is poor in presenting language expression,the main reason of which is the abstraction of language itself.In terms of language expression,students not only listen carefully in class,but also pay more attention to the accumulation and application of language usage daily.Based on the above conclusions,this research puts forward the following teaching implications:Firstly,teachers should learn to rationally use multiple modal resources before,during and after class.Multimedia transmits and conveys information by presenting texts,sounds,pictures and videos,which can well mobilize students’ various senses to work together and clearly let students know and understand the content of this writing class,so as to strengthen their understandings of the writing themes,contents and structures.Secondly,in multi-modal writing teaching,the selection and combination of various modes should follow the validity,efficiency and economy.Compared with traditional writing classes,the collaboration of various modes can help students learn new knowledge better.However,ineffective multimodal combinations can also lead to poor learning results.Thirdly,teachers should do better to change roles and provide timely help for students’ learning.Fourthly,the methods and subjects of composition evaluation should be diversified,such as classroom evaluation and after-class evaluation,evaluation between students and evaluation between teachers and students.