大学英语多模态教学模式对学生英语自主学习能力的影响研究

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background of the Present Study
China has developed greatly and then we get more chances to interact with the world so we need numerous professional talents with professional knowledge and skills who have a good command  of  foreign  language.  And  although  learners’  autonomous  learning  ability  makes  a great  difference  in  English  learning,  a  lot  of  college  students  fail  to  know  how  to  learn autonomously, especially the non-English-major students. Therefore, it becomes very important to fostering their English learning autonomy and promoting English learning effect. In  2007,  Ministry  of  Higher  Education  of  China  drew  up  “Requirements  of  College English  Teaching”.  It  mentions  that  the  promotion  of  students’  ability  of  reading,  listening, speaking, writing, translating and communicating is the purpose of College English Teaching. To be fit for the current situation in China, the teachers need to explore some new methods in English teaching. College English Curriculum Requirements (2007) also presents that modern technology  and  computer-assisted  internet  teaching  model  should  be  completely  utilized.  All these indicate that the teachers should apply different teaching methods to improve the students’ English learning. What’s  more,  for  a  long  time,  the  traditional  college  English  class  is  based  on  text  and conversation teaching mode. And also because the class size is too large and class time is too tight,  the  teachers  have  to  complete  the  intensive  reading,  extensive  reading,  listening, explaining the exercises etc. in a limited time. The result is that the teachers have no time to care about the students’ listening. 
.........

1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Present Study 
College English teachers have tried their best to use multimedia in their classes fully with the development of modern educational technology. With a positive and lively  way to teach, various linguistic semiotics will give an extremely deeper impression on students and teachers can have a better comprehension about what students have actually known. The purpose of the present  research  is  to  show  the  effects  of  College  English  multimodal  teaching  mode  on  students’ autonomous learning ability through analyzing the results from the questionnaire of English  learner  autonomy.  In  other  words,  the  present  study  aims  at  figuring  out  if  the multimodal teaching mode can enhance the learners’ autonomous learning ability significantly. This study offers a fundamental and overall theory to illustrate the concept of modality, multimodality, multimodal discourse, multimodal discourse analysis, multimodal teaching and multimodal  teaching  mode;  the  way  of  constructing  a  multimodal  class,  the  good  way  of motivating students’ English learning autonomy, and the results of College English multimodal teaching mode on students’ autonomous learning ability. What are mentioned above can bring not only a practical guidance for English teaching as well as theoretical essence. On one hand, multimodal  discourse  analysis  provides  a  new  approach  to  College  English  teaching.  On  the other, it supplies the solution to some problems of teaching. College English teachers can enrich the  theoretical  structure  of  College  English  teaching  with  Multimodal  discourse  analysis, improves  College  English  teaching  system  and  helps  students  to  promote  their  learning autonomy.   
.........

Chapter Two Literature Review 

This chapter includes three parts. Firstly, a concise introduction to the theories of Modality, Multimodality, Multimodal discourse analysis, Multimodal teaching, and Multimodal teaching mode is given. Secondly, the definition of students’ autonomous learning and characteristics of autonomous learners are reviewed. Thirdly, the research on multimodal teaching and students’ autonomous learning ability abroad and at home are shown. 

2.1 Multimodal Teaching Mode 
Before we explain the most important conceptümultimodal teaching mode in the present study,  some  other  relevant  key  terms  should  be  introduced  at  first.  They  are  modality, multimodality, multimodal discourse, multimodal discourse analysis and multimodal teaching. Modality  indicates  the  interactive  action  between  senses  of  human,  such  as  sight,  touch and hearing and the external conditions, such as people, animals, machines (Gu Yueguo, 2007). This interactive action is achieved by only one kind or some kinds of medium, such as eyes, ears and hands, etc. As a result, we can know that modality means modality means the semiotic resource, and medium refers to the physical resources. Interactive action with just single sense is named single modality. Multimodality is “integrating various symbolic  patterns together like speech and picture during an interactive context and situation” (Van Leeuwen, 2005:281). Namely, it researches on connection  between  various  modalities  of  communication,  such  as  visual,  audio,  written  and oral.  Meanwhile,  it  recodes  the  significance  of  discourses  which  is  composed  of  different semiotic  modes.  Jweitt  (2009)  considers  that  there  are  two  interpretations  of  the  term “multimodality”. One is multimodality as theory for the combination of resources and modes in multimodal  phenomenon,  and  the  other  is  multimodality  as  research  of  new  fields  or  the application  of  a  particular  approach  to  fields  not  previously  treated  in  that  way. 
....

2.2 Autonomous Learning Ability
It was the notion of “autonomous learning” that opened up discussion about the promotion of  learning  capacity  for  the  whole  life  and  the  development  of  independent  thinkers  both  of which emerged in 1960s (Gardner and Miller 2002:6). The conception has developed in various geographical areas so that there are a lot of various terminologies to make a definition for it, for instance  “learner  autonomous  ability”,  “autonomously  learn”,  “self-directed  learning” “self-regulated  learning”  and  “self-monitoring”  etc.  Self-directed  learning  is  a  complicated multidimensional conception. Because of being short of agreement among all the researchers, it makes defining self-directed studying a tough task. We can categorize concepts of autonomous learning into 4 main types of thought. Autonomous learning being a state Dickinson (1987: 11), considered autonomous learning ability  to  be  “the  state  in  which  the  students  take  full  responsibilities  for  all  determinations about  their  study  and  executing  their  determinations”.  Jeffries  (1990)  gave  a  definition  of self-regulated as: it is one kind of learning. During the process of learning, the students should be  responsible  for  it  by  themselves  and  there  was  no  teachers’  direct  intervention  in  it.  The students should take more responsibility for the learning contents, the learning method and the learning schedule. They can assess their learning achievement, too. (Tang Lan, 2014) 
........

Chapter Three Methodology ........ 27 
3.1 Research Questions ........... 27 
3.2 Participants ........ 27 
3.3 Instruments ........ 28 
3.4 Research Procedures ......... 28
Chapter Four Results and Discussion ......... 35 
4.1 Overall Situation of the Participants’ Autonomous Learning Ability ....... 35
4.3 Change of the Students’ Autonomous Ability from Four Dimensions ..... 38
Chapter Five Conclusion ...... 43 
5.1 Major Findings .......... 43 
5.2 Pedagogical Implications .......... 44 
5.3 Limitations of the Study .... 44 
5.4 Suggestions for Further Research ..... 45  

Chapter Four Results and Discussion

4.1 Overall Situation of the Participants’ Autonomous Learning Ability 
The survey will show the level of the participants’ autonomous learning ability before the experiment  through  analyzing  the  pre-questionnaire  results  and  the  level  after  experiment through analyzing the post-questionnaire results. The questionnaire is composed of twenty-eight items, and each item has five choices:1 2 3 4 and 5. 1 stands for strongly disagreeable, 1 score; 2  stands  for  disagreeable,  2  scores;  3  stands  for  neutral,  3  scores;  4  stands  for  agreeable,  4 scores; 5 stands for strongly agreeable, 5 scores. The total score of 28 items is 140. According to the students’ total score, the degree of their autonomous learning ability is judged. There are four  related  results:  No  autonomy  (less  than  thirty-five  points);  Low  degree  of  autonomy (between thirty-six and seventy points); Moderate degree of autonomy (between seventy-one and one hundred and six points) and High degree of autonomy (more than one hundred and five points).  All the results in the pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire are presented in Appendix II. From Table 4.1, we can figure out that all the participants’ scores are above thirty-five and below the one hundred and six. Among them, there are fourteen participants whose scores are from  36  and  70,  which  occupied  twenty-three  percent,  belonging  to  low  degree  autonomy. There are forty-six participants whose scores are from 71 to 105, which occupied sixty-seven percent, belonging to moderate degree autonomy.  
.........

Conclusion 

Through  one  semester’s  research  and  results  analyses,  the  thesis  answered  the  two questions which were mentioned before. As the summary of study, this chapter has reached a conclusion and presented some findings and implications. Through analyzing the data of thirty students’ pre-questionnaires and post-questionnaires and  data  analyses,  we  can  find  some  important  results  about  the  effect  of  College  English multimodal teaching mode on the student learning autonomy. Firstly,  the  students’  English  autonomous  learning  ability  can  be  improved  through  the application of College English multimodal teaching mode, which can be shown by analyzing the  data  of  the  questionnaires.  Within  the  process  of  English  teaching  and  learning  in  the experimental  class,  the  various  modalities  help  much  in  the  creation  of  a  more  harmonious atmosphere. Under this situation, the student can be self-motivated to find the problems, solve the problems and then adjust their learning strategies. As a result, students learn English more autonomously and their English autonomous learning ability is improved. Secondly, the data analysis of twenty-eight items in the questionnaire indicates that there is indeed a significant difference in terms of setting learning goals and supervising and assessing the  learning  process  and  there  is  no  significant  difference  in  terms  of  applying  learning strategies  and  students’  English  learning  motivation.  That  means  the  application  of  College English multimodal teaching mode has enhanced the students’ ability to set learning goals and supervise and assess the learning process a lot, but College English multimodal teaching mode can  just  enhance  the  students’  ability  to  apply  learning  strategies  and  students’  English motivation a little. 
.........
The reference (omitted)