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The meaning of multimodal discourse teaching in English courses, teaching focus and difficulties
Chen Li
1. What is multimodal discourse
What is a discourse? Discourse is an important means for humans to convey information and is a language unit with communicative meaning or contextual semantics. The form of discourse includes monomodal (monomodal) and multimodal (multimodal). The mode here refers to the mode or method of the message being transmitted in the text.
The spoken or written language used in our daily conversation and writing articles is usually a single modal. The words spoken or written articles are monomodal text (Monomodal text / Monomodal discussion). "Multimodal" is relative to "singlemodal". If we are in addition to language, we also use other means such as pictures, emoticons, sound effects, animations, etc. At this time, the discourse contains more than two modals, which is called multimodal discourse (Multimodal text / Multimodal discourse).
2. Modal classification in multimodal discourse
The "modal" in multimodal discourse can be divided into two major classes, namely Language modal (Linguistic mode) and Non-linguistic mode (Nonlinguistic mode). Language modality can be in Chinese, English, , Spanish, and other languages, oral or written, oral or printed in text. The non-verbal modality can be further divided into visual Visual (such as Non-verbal Symbols, charts, graphics, images, colors, animations, etc.), Gestural (such as Non-verbal Emotions, gestures, postures, Performances, Spatial (using space and location to convey meaning, such as installation art, etc.), and auditory Aural (such as non-verbal sound, music, sound effects, etc.).
Multimodal discourse is a discourse that calls any two or more of the above five types of modalities and combines them to convey information or express meaning.
3. Why do you emphasize multimodal discourse teaching in English courses
In the digital information age, multimodal discourse is everywhere in our daily work and life. For example, textbooks, picture books, PPTs, electronic whiteboards, etc. commonly used in classroom teaching; movies, TV, advertising, WeChat, Weibo , Douyin , Meipian, Toutiao, Xiaohongshu, etc., are all examples of multimodal discourse that everyone is familiar with.
In recent years, multimodal discourse teaching is emphasized in English courses, which is essentially an objective reflection of the development of real society. The fifth skill in cultivating English language skills mentioned in the English curriculum standards for primary and secondary schools (2017/2022) - the skill of "looking", actually refers to cultivating students' ability to accurately decode the information and meaning of English multimodal discourse.
4. The key points and difficulties of English multimodal discourse teaching
Foreign language multimodal discourse teaching is basically the same as traditional foreign language discourse teaching, and both are still in the aspect of English language culture. From the perspective of curriculum education and English teaching, the focus and difficulties of multimodal English discourse teaching are not essentially different from traditional single-modal discourse teaching such as reading and listening. They are all guided to obtain discourse information and construct meaning through correct decoding of discourse form. There are obvious differences in the information understanding and meaning construction process of foreign language multimodal discourse and native language multimodal discourse, so the teaching focus and difficulties are also different.
Compared with language modes (Linguistic mode), the other four types of modes in the multimodal discourse, whether they are charts, icons, images, sound effects, colors, and animations, will basically not pose a cognitive challenge for the generation of primary and secondary school students who "grow up reading pictures".As "Internet Aboriginals", primary and secondary school students may generally be more familiar with various modalities other than language in multimodal discourse than their teachers. Therefore, multimodal discourse teaching generally does not require special "design". When most students understand extracurricular multimodal discourses in textbooks or the same difficulty, the main difficulty is the English language and culture, which should also be the key difficulty of teaching.
Multimodal discourse teaching requires teachers to keep up with the development of the times, consciously and proactively pay attention to learning and understanding various non-verbal modalities that students are familiar with, so as to have the ability to better guide students to pay attention to the coordination of multiple modalities in meaning communication.
In non-linguistic modalities, some cultural elements with special significance often appear, such as certain colors, symbols, gestures, etc. have special meanings in English culture that are different from those in Chinese culture, which may affect the communication and understanding of the overall meaning of the multimodal discourse. Students should also be guided to pay enough attention to this type of non-verbal modal modality element in multimodal discourse teaching.
5. Requirements for teachers in multimodal discourse teaching
English curriculum standards point out that in the digital information age, English teachers need to keep pace with the times and continuously improve their information literacy, especially paying attention to the unique discourse functions of various non-verbal modalities in information communication and meaning construction. Information technology provides rich modal means, tools and platforms for English teaching. English teachers can fully call and integrate these resources to create meaningful and interesting situations to improve the effectiveness of English learning, promote the development of students' core literacy, and better implement the overall goal of curriculum educating.
6. Supplementary explanations
(I) Specific requirements for "multimodal discourse" of the curriculum standard
The following is the specific expression of the "multimodal discourse" teaching of English in primary and junior high schools in primary and secondary schools (abbreviated in high school. See the English Curriculum Standards (2017/2020)): 1) The course content section mentions the language skills requirements for "looking". "Looking" usually refers to "using the skills of understanding meaning such as graphics, tables, animations, symbols, and videos in multimodal discourse. Understanding multimodal discourse requires not only the use of traditional reading skills, but also the information in the charts and the meaning of symbols and animations." 2) Content requirements: Level 1 and Level 1 + teaching requirements "infer the meaning of pictures, images, sounds, colors, etc. in multimodal discourses (such as covers and back covers of animations, books and other printed materials, invitation cards and greeting cards)"; Level 2 and Level 2 + teaching requirements "understand the meaning of conveying multimodal discourses (such as covers and back covers of animations, posters, books and other printed materials, etc.) and extract key information"; Level 3 and Level 3 + teaching requirements "understand the meaning of non-textual resources conveyed in multimodal discourses". 3) The academic quality part of the third grade (grades 7-9) requires "being able to understand the main content of multimodal discourse (such as radio, television programs, etc.) and obtain key information." 4) The implementation part of the curriculum requires English teachers to "improve the efficiency of information technology use. Teachers should fully realize that modern information technology not only provides multimodal means, platforms and space for English teaching, but also provides rich resources and cross-time and space language learning and use opportunities, which plays an important supporting role in creating a good learning situation, promoting the update of educational concepts and the transformation of teaching methods."
(II) Two similar concepts: Multimodal and multimedia
are closely related to "multimodal" (Multimodal), called "multimedia". The distinction between these two concepts is still under discussion and there is no public opinion. A relatively consistent view is that the distinction between the two is mainly due to the difference in perspectives, "multimodal" highlights the way or pattern of discourse construction; "multimedia" highlights technical means or tools. When not particularly emphasizing the difference between the two, the two terms can sometimes be used as synonyms.
(III) Keep pace with the times and stick to the original intention
In the past two or three decades, the international foreign language teaching or the Second Language Teaching field has not been consistent in the attitudes of multimodal foreign language teaching or multimodal second language teaching. This is somewhat similar to the long-term debate among different schools on communication method (CLT) and task method (TBLT), and there are also different propositions such as overly strong multimodal (Strong Version) and weak multimodal (Weak Version). Judging from the current overall situation, weak multimodal may be more suitable for our national conditions, teaching and learning situations. For foreign language teaching, in the process of actively exploring how to make full use of multimodal resources, the teaching community still needs to adhere to the original intention of foreign language courses to educate people, especially to warn of the misleading of various formalism and technicalism practices that have lost the roots and ends to teachers and students.
(This article was first published in "Primary School Teaching Design English" 2022 Issue 11)
