Research On Image Modality In Textbooks Of Chinese As A Foreign Language

With the advent of the "era of reading pictures",looking at "pictures" has become the main way for people to obtain knowledge as much as looking at "words".Multimodal theory believes that the communication of information is not only the use of linguistic modalities,but also affirms the independence and ideographic value of non-verbal modalities such as images,attaches importance to the study of the meaning of images and the relationship between image and text,and creates a new perspective of image research.This study mainly uses quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis to study the image mode of the two textbooks "Developing Chinese—Elementary Comprehensive I & II",Firstly,by analyzing the number of images and image types in the two textbooks,investigating their image modal configuration,and then using the visual grammar theory framework of Kress and Van Leeuwen to discuss the construction of image meaning in the two textbooks,and then analyzing the relationship between image and text modes in the two textbooks with the help of Martinec and Salway’s image-text relationship theory framework.It is found that the number of images in the two textbooks basically meets the needs of beginner learners.The textbook uses six image types: photos,physical pictures,comics,tables,talk frames,and example pictures,and the number of images of each type varies greatly and is unevenly distributed,mainly based on text frames and tables,distributed in texts and language points.With the elimination of learners’ strangeness and the improvement of Chinese language ability,the number of image modalities of photos,physical drawings and comics in the second textbook has decreased compared with the previous volume,all of which have decreased by more than 3.50%.In contrast,the number of boxes indicating difficult information surged by 49.80%,indicating that teaching materials focus on the transmission of knowledge and information,and ignore interesting images with strong visual stimulation.The construction of image meaning mainly constructs the reproduction meaning of the image through the analysis process,reflecting the relationship between the whole and the part.In the two textbooks,the analysis process accounted for 70.80%and 90.70% respectively,and with the improvement of learners’ level,the data highlighting the relationship between the whole and the part of the analysis process also increased.The interactive significance of images in the two textbooks is mainly based on indirect images of non-line contact,which are manifested in two types,frame and table,which directly express pure text information content,accounting for96.80% and 99.20% of the upper and lower volumes,respectively.The composition meaning of the image conforms to the commonly used patterns in the process of information transmission,mainly using the method of left text and right picture to construct the meaning of the image in the traditional spatial layout mode.Image saliency needs to be improved,and there are only 4 color images in the upper volume,and the color richness is lacking.In terms of the relationship between image and text,the relationship between equality is the mainstay,and images and words are independent or related to each other.Independent relationships accounted for 45.70% of the first book and 9.30% in the lower volume,while complementary relationships rose from 15.90% in the first volume to 80.90% in the lower volume.With the increase of learning difficulty and learning content,the correlation between image and text is further strengthened.In the unequal relationship,the picture is mainly attached to the text,and the image is attached to the text,which assists the text to convey information.In the logical semantic relationship,images mainly express the conceptual reproduction meaning of pure text information,and the relationship between rich text and image elaboration increases with the difficulty of learning content,from 39.50% in the first volume to73.30% in the second volume.Based on the above research,the author believes that the number of image modalities in the textbook is sufficient,but the distribution is uneven,and the number of some types of images is small.The meaning of images mainly reflects knowledge-based content,ignoring images with strong visual stimulation,and the relationship between graphics and text pays attention to the communication of intellectual content,but ignores the interaction between images and learners.Textbook writers should attach importance to the value of image modality,construct the meaning of images,and increase interaction with learners.Teachers should establish a multimodal awareness and give full play to the maximum value of the image modality of the textbook.