A Study On Image Cohesion Of PEP Junior And Senior High School English Textbooks Based On The Theory Of Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Textbooks play a vital role in educational discourse,so the study of multimodal discourse in textbooks is not only helpful for teachers,but also for students’ multiliteracy development.In addition,since the development of junior high school and senior high school students’ cognitive ability is a continuous and uninterrupted process,it is also of great significance to study image cohesion between two sets of textbooks to better develop students’ cognitive level.In view of the above,this study selects Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar,Zhu Zhixian and Lin Chongde’s cognitive development theory and Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Objectives(revised version)to research image function and image cohesion between junior and senior high school English textbooks of PEP edition.The research questions are as follows:(1)How are the three functions of visual grammar of images realized in these two sets of textbooks? Do image functions reflect cohesion in two sets of textbooks?(2)How is the cohesion of images involving different levels of cognitive activities in two sets of textbooks?Through a detailed analysis to images and texts in junior high school and senior high school textbooks of PEP edition,the final findings are as follow:(1)Images of the two sets of textbooks are fairly in line with visual grammar and show a certain degree of textbook cohesion.First of all,as for representational function,images showing action process,speech and mental process and classificational process reflect good textbook cohesion.The different distribution of images showing action process in junior and senior high school textbooks fully takes into account the different cognitive levels and learning characteristics of junior and senior high school students,so it shows a good textbook cohesion.The number of images showing speech and mental process and showing classificational process both decreases with the increase of grades.Compared with students in upper grades,students in lower grades need these two types of images to better understand the learning content.Therefore,images showing speech and mental process and images showing classificational process reflect a good textbook cohesion.Secondly,as for interactive function,there is no significant textbook cohesion.In both sets of textbooks,“Offer” is the main form of the contact images,medium-shot is the main form of social distance images.Thirdly,as for compositional function,images reflect good cohesion.Compared with senior high school textbooks,images in junior high school textbooks pay more attention to the logical order of information in images and fully consider the difference in logical thinking ability between junior and senior high school students.(2)Through the analysis of images involving cognitive activities in junior and senior high school English textbooks,it is found that images involving low-level cognitive activities fairly reflect good textbook cohesion.The proportion of images involving “identify” and “apply” cognitive levels decreases with the increase of grade,which reflects that junior high school textbooks pay more attention to cultivate students’ low-level cognitive abilities.Images involving high-level cognitive activities don’t reflect textbook cohesion very well.Through analysis,the proportion of images involving “analyze”,“evaluate” and “create” activities don’t not conform to the development of students’ cognitive level.The research findings provide some implications to teachers and textbook compilers.First of all,both junior and senior high school curriculum standards emphasize the development of “listening,speaking,reading,writing and viewing” skill,so teachers should actively infiltrate multimodal theory in English teaching and improve students’ listening,speaking,reading and writing skills combined with the cultivation of “viewing” skill.At the same time,teachers should pay attention to image function and make full use of images to develop students’ cognitive ability.Secondly,on the basis of this study,textbook compilers can adjust the modes of textbook images according to the multimodal theory so as to continuously enrich the multi-modal resources of textbooks.Textbook compilers should also fully consider the cognitive development levels of junior and senior high school students and the functional characteristics of images to make better use of the multiple functions of textbooks.