1. Introduction
1.1 Background of the Research
Vocabulary is one of the three elements of language, and it is the backbone of language system, “If we compare language construction as language sketch, vocabulary is the thing that provides important organs as well as blood and flesh”(Harmer1990:158). Therefore, vocabulary is an indispensable part of language learning, vocabulary teaching is an important part of the whole English teaching system. In China, English is a main subject in secondary school. Acquiring English vocabulary is a precondition for students to study English, because pronunciation, vocabulary and syntax are the three most crucial factors in language stucture, and vocabulary is the most crucial factor. Whereas, there are lots of issues in the teaching of junior middle school English vocabulary. Particularly, they contain the following sides:
(1) Students have increased difficulty in vocabulary learning .English Curricular Standards in the Phase of Compulsory Education (2011) especially notes the Nine-year compulsory education students should achieve the following points: students can memorize the word, its collocation, phrases, idioms and other forms; students can understand the vocabulary’s conceptual meaning and connotative meaning; students can use the vocabulary to express definitions and describe the objects , attributes and action; students can correctly utilize at least 1500-1600 words and master 200-300 idioms and fixed collocations. Nevertheless, for junior middle school students and English teachers, this is a serious challenge. This is because the specific teaching methods used by most teachers are vague. Occasionally, teachers will teach words based on their specific learning situation and their own experience, considering which words should be emphasized, what degree these words should be learned and how to explain the vocabulary. The majority of teachers still teach the vocabulary by leading - following - explaining - reviewing - testing this traditional teaching method, and students are also mechanically relying on rote memorization to master English vocabulary, which cause terrible effect of vocabulary acquisition.Consequently, we should improve the present lexical teaching mode.
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1.2 Significance of the Research
1.2.1 Academic Significance
The use of multimodal discourse analysis theory in junior high school vocabulary teaching has extremely important theoretical and practical value. In terms of theoretical value, multimodal discourse analysis is based on systemic functional linguistics , which extends the scope of discourse analysis from pure language to various nonverbal symbols including images and sounds. In the teaching process, it advocates fully mobilizing multiple modal resources and teaching methods to complete the teaching and obtain the best teaching results.This paper attempts to transform the research results of multimodal discourse analysis into multimodal English vocabulary teaching steps, which is enrichment and complementary to the theory of multimodal discourse analysis.What’s more, it is further optimization of teaching theory. Through empirical research, the multimodal English vocabulary teaching steps are applied to the vocabulary teaching to verify the teaching effect of the teaching model, and provide feasible teaching suggestions for junior high school English vocabulary teaching.
1.2.2 Practical Significance
Based on multimodal discourse analysis,establishing a multimodal English vocabulary teaching model, this study summarizes the characteristics of the model to apply the model to the junior high school vocabulary teaching process which can verify the teaching effect of the teaching model.Through the application of the teaching mode, it puts forward practical teaching suggestions for the current vocabulary teaching, promotes the diversification of teachers' teaching methods, and promotes the development of vocabulary teaching reform to a deeper level.In addition,this study provides practical and operational multimodal English vocabulary teaching steps for the future reform of junior high school teaching, especially vocabulary teaching reform. Confronted with the situation that there are many theoretical studies on language teaching but the application research is relatively lacking, this study attempts to combine theoretical research with practical research to examine the effectiveness of multimodal English vocabulary teaching steps through teaching experiments and questionnaires. Listing some teaching cases to enrich the practical experience of relevant research, at the same time, this paper puts forward some feasible vocabulary teaching opinions, which has important practical significance for the transformation of junior high school vocabulary teaching methods.
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2. Literature Review
2.1 Relevant Concepts
2.1.1 Multimodal Theory
2.1.1.1 Definition of Multimodality
Van Leeuwen (2005) said: "Multimodality refers to a combination of diverse symbol patterns, for instance, language and music in chinny artifacts or matters."
Baldry & Thibault (2006) said: "Multimodality means a number of different ways in which symbolic resource systems deploy code and co-contextualize when making text-specific meanings."
Machin (2007) said: "Multimodality thus gives a description of the syntax of visual communication used by stylist. It is an analysis of norms and tenets that permits the audience to know the semantic potential of relative position of elements, frame, significance, proximity, color saturation, font style, etc. "
or saturation, font style, etc. " Zhang (2009) said: "Multimodality, also called multi-symbolism, means that people use aural, visual, tactile and other senses to exchange with one another through language, pictures, sounds, actions, etc.
In short, from the above mentioned by the researcher, we can infer that multimodality researches the mutual relations and interdependencies between diverse patterns of communication, despite whether they are written or verbal, visual or aural. It is also an approach of transcribed the implication of words composed of diverse symbol patterns.
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2.2 Researches on Multimodal English Vocabulary Teaching Abroad and at Home
2.2.1 Researches on Multimodal Teaching Aborad and at Home
2.2.1.1Researches on Multimodal Teaching Abroad
Traditional language discourse analysis lays emphasis on the analysis of the conversational language itself, does not consider the symbolic elements outside the text, or neglects the vital role of the non-verbal model during the courses of sense-making. With the growth of contemporary social information technology, the field of languages has been extended to the study of multimodal discourse analysis (Barthes, 1997). In reality, Barthes was the earliest research worker in multi-modal discourse analysis. He issued a "metaphor" in 1977, which discussed the mutual effect between pictures and linguistics in imagery. In the 1990s, a synthetic analysis of various discourse analysis models emerged, and multimodal theory started to be diffusely researched in Western countries.
In 1996, Kress and Leeuwen issued Reading Pictures. They analyzed discourse from the viewpoint of visual syntax, based on many texts, including a large number of media materials, visual arts, maps and graphic forms of scientific study. This is a vital study in the history of multimodal discourse analysis, and began to discuss the building of synthetic multimodal discourse analysis theory. This book explains the visual syntax of picture for the first time. The writer also analyzed the figurines, art design and commercials in the textbooks, providing a theoretical element for reading the picture.
In 1998, Royce started to research the complementarity of diverse models in discourse and the multimodal harmony in classroom teaching.
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3. Research Design ................................... 18
3.1 Research Aims ................................... 18
3.2 Research Questions ............................... 18
3.3 Participants ............................. 18
4. Results and Discussions ............................... 29
4.1 Analysis the Effect of Multimodal English Vocabulary Teaching .............................. 29
4.1.1 Data Analysis of Pre-test ............................... 29
4.1.2 Data Analysis of Post-test ............................. 29
5.Conclusions and Implications .............................. 36
5.1 Major Findings ..................................... 36
5.2 Implications ............................ 37
4. Results and Discussions
4.1 Analysis the Effect of Multimodal English Vocabulary Teaching
4.1.1 Data Analysis of Pre-test
After the pre-test is completed, the pre-test outcomes of experimental and control class are analyzed by means of SPSS statistical analysis software. The author collect students’ scores and input them into SPSS, which gets the following table(Table4-1)
As can be seen from Table 4-1, the average scores of the experimental class is 70.47, and the average scores of the control class is 70.26, so the average scores of the experimental class and the control class are very alike. The writer then performed an independent sample T-test to further check if the scores of the experimental and control classes were significantly different.The scores of students from control class and experimental class are input into SPSS, which gets the following table(Table4-2).
As can be seen from Table 4-2, the relevant two-tailed possibility of the pre-tested independent sample T-test is 0.858, much bigger than 0.05. Therefore, it can be derived that there is no important diversity between the scores of the experimental and control classes in the pre-test. Thus, it is very rational to use these two classes as the study of this experiment.
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5.Conclusions and Implications
5.1 Major Findings
It obtains two major findings from the research.
(1) Multimodal English vocabulary teaching approach can improve student English vocabulary achievement in junior high school.
First, based on the outcomes of the analysis of the pre-test and post-test: in the pre-test, the average value of the experimental class was 70.47, and the average value of the control class was 70.26. Thus, the average value of experimental and control class is very alike. However, in the post-test, the average value of the experimental class was 80.10, and the average value of the control class was 71.26, which indicates that the mean grade of the experimental class was 8.84 points higher than the control class. At the meanwhile, the average grade of post-test and pre-test in the experimental class enhances 9.63. Thus, the multimodal English vocabulary teaching method can increase the English word scores of junior middle school students.
Secondly, based on the analysis the outcomes of pre-test and post-test: in the pre-test, the mean grade of the experimental class is 70.47, and the average value of the control class is 70.26. At the meanwhile, the relevant two-tail possibility of the pretest independent sample T test is 0.858, much larger than 0.05. Therefore, there was no important deviation between the grades of the experimental and control classes in the pre-test. However, in the post-test, the average value of the experimental class is 80.10, the mean grade of the control class is 71.26, and the average value of the experimental class is 8.84, which was higher than the control class. At the meanwhile, the relevant two-tailed possibility of the independent sample T test of the posttest is 0.000, much less than 0.05. Therefore, after the test, there is an important deviation between the grades of the experimental class and the control class. Thus, it is derived that the multimodal English vocabulary teaching mode and the traditional English vocabulary teaching mode have important deviation in English word achievement and memory retention among junior middle school students.
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