How a teacher presents information and motivates students to talk in English can seriously decide the efficiency of an English class; therefore, teachers need to explore sufficient approaches to stimulate students to talk. Coaching students to be involved in the process of communication can greatly satisfy individualized English learning. The author here will analyze teaching speaking based on multimodality and put forward some suggestions for English learners and teachers.
The objectives of this research were to find out: 1) whether or not Think-Pair-Share Technique is effective in improving students’ speaking ability of eighth grade students of SMPN 4 Panca Rijang and 2) whether or not the Eighth grade students of SMPN 4 Panca Rijang are interested in learning speaking English through Think-Pair-Share technique. This research applied quasi-experimental design. The population of this research was three classes of Eighth grade students of SMPN 4 Panca Rijang academic year 2014/2015 with the total population were 69 students. The sample of this research were VIII.1 (23 students) as the experimental group and VIII.3 (23 students) as the control group. This sample was taken by cluster sampling technique. The researcher applied Think-Pair-Share technique in the experimental group and conventional way in control group. This research applied two kinds of instruments were speaking test and questionnaire. Speaking test was used to obtain data of the students’ speaking ability and questionnaire was used to know the students’ interest in learning speaking English through Think-Pair-Share technique. The researcher found that there was a significant difference between achievement of the students who applied Think-Pair-Share technique and who did not applied Think-Pair-Share technique in speaking. It was proved by t-test of post-test (2.206) was higher than t-table (2.021), for α = 0.05 and df = (44) and by the mean score of post-test in experimental group (68.57) was better than mean score of post-test in control group (56.35). And the researcher also found that the Eighth grade students of SMPN 4 Panca Rijang were interested in learning speaking English through Think-Pair-Share technique. It was proved by there were 22 students (95.7%) were interested in speaking English through Think-Pair-Share technique and the mean score of questionnaire was 83.22 and it included in interested category. Based on the data analysis, the researcher concluded that: 1) Think-Pair-Share Technique is effective in improving students’ speaking ability and 2) Eighth grade students of SMPN 4 Panca Rijang are interested in learning speaking English through Think-Pair-Share technique.
The Effect of Using English Language only and Not Using the Mother Tongue in ...inventionjournals
The Effect of Using English Language only and Not Using the Mother Tongue In Teaching Units Fifteen and Sixteen for the Students of Sixth Primary Class on their Acquisition of English Language
The objectives of this research were to find out: 1) whether or not Think-Pair-Share Technique is effective in improving students’ speaking ability of eighth grade students of SMPN 4 Panca Rijang and 2) whether or not the Eighth grade students of SMPN 4 Panca Rijang are interested in learning speaking English through Think-Pair-Share technique. This research applied quasi-experimental design. The population of this research was three classes of Eighth grade students of SMPN 4 Panca Rijang academic year 2014/2015 with the total population were 69 students. The sample of this research were VIII.1 (23 students) as the experimental group and VIII.3 (23 students) as the control group. This sample was taken by cluster sampling technique. The researcher applied Think-Pair-Share technique in the experimental group and conventional way in control group. This research applied two kinds of instruments were speaking test and questionnaire. Speaking test was used to obtain data of the students’ speaking ability and questionnaire was used to know the students’ interest in learning speaking English through Think-Pair-Share technique. The researcher found that there was a significant difference between achievement of the students who applied Think-Pair-Share technique and who did not applied Think-Pair-Share technique in speaking. It was proved by t-test of post-test (2.206) was higher than t-table (2.021), for α = 0.05 and df = (44) and by the mean score of post-test in experimental group (68.57) was better than mean score of post-test in control group (56.35). And the researcher also found that the Eighth grade students of SMPN 4 Panca Rijang were interested in learning speaking English through Think-Pair-Share technique. It was proved by there were 22 students (95.7%) were interested in speaking English through Think-Pair-Share technique and the mean score of questionnaire was 83.22 and it included in interested category. Based on the data analysis, the researcher concluded that: 1) Think-Pair-Share Technique is effective in improving students’ speaking ability and 2) Eighth grade students of SMPN 4 Panca Rijang are interested in learning speaking English through Think-Pair-Share technique.
The Effect of Using English Language only and Not Using the Mother Tongue in ...inventionjournals
The Effect of Using English Language only and Not Using the Mother Tongue In Teaching Units Fifteen and Sixteen for the Students of Sixth Primary Class on their Acquisition of English Language
Recently English has been employed as a medium of instruction at the Vietnamese tertiary level. It is necessary to teach its students listening strategies to help them deal with the potential problems that may arise during listening or prepare them for their further educational purposes. This study, therefore, aims to explore the EFL teachers’ perceptions of listening strategies and the application of listening strategies, and discover difficulties that they encounter in their instruction at a public university (henceforth called PU) in Ho Chi Minh City-Vietnam. Thirty six EFL teachers who were teaching English at PU were invited to participate in the study. Quantitative and qualitative data were obtained through two instruments, namely questionnaire and interview. The results revealed that not all the strategies were frequently employed for listening instruction. Several strategies were more frequently employed than the others; for example, cognitive, metacognitive and affective strategies were frequently integrated into instruction by the EFL teachers. Regarding the potential problems relating to listening lessons, the results showed that most of the EFL teachers had difficulties relating to professional development, students and teaching resources. This study is expected to shed light to the implementation of teaching listening strategies in PU context and in other similar contexts.
Part of a full series of ppts on curriculum development available on EFL Classroom - https://community.eflclassroom.com/forum2/topics/elt-curriculum-development
This presentation offers a genral view of the main aspects to be taken into consideration when teaching an English class. I revise key concepts such as "methodology", "approach" and "method", and I also take into account some characteristics of the XXI century learner as well as the use of technology for teaching.
Recently English has been employed as a medium of instruction at the Vietnamese tertiary level. It is necessary to teach its students listening strategies to help them deal with the potential problems that may arise during listening or prepare them for their further educational purposes. This study, therefore, aims to explore the EFL teachers’ perceptions of listening strategies and the application of listening strategies, and discover difficulties that they encounter in their instruction at a public university (henceforth called PU) in Ho Chi Minh City-Vietnam. Thirty six EFL teachers who were teaching English at PU were invited to participate in the study. Quantitative and qualitative data were obtained through two instruments, namely questionnaire and interview. The results revealed that not all the strategies were frequently employed for listening instruction. Several strategies were more frequently employed than the others; for example, cognitive, metacognitive and affective strategies were frequently integrated into instruction by the EFL teachers. Regarding the potential problems relating to listening lessons, the results showed that most of the EFL teachers had difficulties relating to professional development, students and teaching resources. This study is expected to shed light to the implementation of teaching listening strategies in PU context and in other similar contexts.
Part of a full series of ppts on curriculum development available on EFL Classroom - https://community.eflclassroom.com/forum2/topics/elt-curriculum-development
This presentation offers a genral view of the main aspects to be taken into consideration when teaching an English class. I revise key concepts such as "methodology", "approach" and "method", and I also take into account some characteristics of the XXI century learner as well as the use of technology for teaching.
Many students find it hard to acquire and convey messages due to the lack of mastery in vocabulary. Since vocabulary plays a major role as the basic requirement to learning a language, its mastery became vital in learning English. On the other hand, lack of vocabulary impedes students’ understanding in reading comprehension texts especially in second language classrooms. Therefore, this study was conducted in order to obtain information regarding the effectiveness of using flip book in increasing Year 3 pupils’ mastery of vocabulary in English. This study investigated the use of flip book approach in helping the students to improve vocabulary through fun and meaningful learning. 15 participants were involved in the action research who were selected from a suburban school in Malaysia. Survey, written documents and field notes were used as the medium of data collection. The results showed significant positive changes in the performance of the students from time to time. Flip book approach was found to help the weak students who faced problems in understanding the meaning of the vocabulary taught in the classrooms. This study suggests that students need to enhance the mastery of the vocabulary in order to have a good grasp of the language including the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
This study focuses on the listening anxiety experienced by teacher candidates (TCs) in Iran and Turkey. Using different data collection methods, including two questionnaires, listening test, and semi-structured interviews, this study tried to investigate the factors behind Foreign Language Listening Anxiety (FLLA) among Iranian teacher candidates (TCs). The participants of the study in Iran context were 29 teacher candidates studying at BA level in English Language Teaching. All of the participants were asked to complete these two questionnaires with the background information regarding their age, gender, years of language study. The participants’ answers to FLLAS and FLCAS were analyzed with spss to obtain frequencies and percentages. The results were compared to the same study by Bekleyen. The findings revealed that Iranian TCs experienced a high level of FLLA compared to Turkish TCs and showed a significant positive correlation between FLLA and FLCA, which means that teacher candidates with higher levels of language anxiety tended to have higher levels of listening anxiety. In addition, interview data suggested that Iranian and Turkish participants’ FLLA mostly originated from the same source: inadequacy of past education in listening skill. Furthermore, practice was the most frequent strategy used by participants in these two countries to overcome this kind of anxiety.
The main thrust of this paper is to examine the issue of racial segregation in Maya Angelou’s “Caged Bird” via exploring the poem in relation to the circumstances that typify life and existence in the African American context. An attempt is made to situate this poem within the heat of racism, oppression, and class discrimination as well as the search for black identity. The paper relies on New Historicism as the scope of exploration owing to the chunk of influence that history and society bears on African American writing. Then literary critical analysis is made to verify the different aspects of racism and social segregation as represented in the poem.
This article provides an overview of existing instruments measuring self-efficacy for English language learning in both first and second language acquisition fields and their reliability and validity evidence. It also describes the development and use of the Questionnaire of English Language Self-Efficacy (QESE) scale, designed specifically for English language learners (ELLs), and presents an overview of the research findings from empirical studies related to its psychometric properties. A growing body of literature has begun to document encouraging evidence of ELL students’ self-efficacy belief measures and the utility of the QESE in particular. The information pertaining to the QESE is quite encouraging from measurement perspectives and fills the gap in the literature by providing a reliable and valid instrument to measure ELLs’ self-efficacy in various cultures. This paper concludes with evidence for internal consistency, test-retest reliability, structural, generalizability, and external aspects of the construct validity of the QESE. This paper contributes to the growing interest in these skills by reviewing the measures of self-efficacy in the field of second-language acquisition and the findings of empirical research on the development and use of a self-efficacy scale for ELLs.
This study examines written errors in a corpus of 30 compositions produced by 15 students of English as a second language (L2), whose first language (L1) is Spanish. Their ages range from 10 to 11. This paper identifies grammar errors as the most frequent due to L1’s interference in L2 learning. Positive, focused, indirect written feedback is proven to be the most effective, and the L1 seems to help the students to understand the teacher’s metalinguistic explanation to correct errors and avoid mistakes. These results provide insight into language learning given that they offer information regarding the teaching practice.
Reading without proper guidance from the perspective of discourse analysis will be a challenge and torture for English readers. However, most college students are suffering from this sort of tedious reading dilemma due to a sense of failure and anxiety as a result of an inefficient teaching approach. In this paper, the author tries to combine discourse analysis with reading coaching so as to arouse and promote readers’ sense of discourse, with the hope of helping them to read effectively.
In her cross-border debate with Chinese anchor Liu Xin, Trish Regan, an American anchor, behaved differently than what she had done in her previous commentaries. This paper explores the attitudinal differences evinced by Trish Regan on different occasions from a linguistic perspective. Based on the Appraisal System, especially the Attitude subsystem (Martin and White, 2005), this paper examines the attitudinal resources utilized by Trish Regan in her two news commentaries and her online debate with her counterpart Liu Xin—a set of texts which provides a longitudinal account of how Trish has changed her attitude. By annotating the attitude resources used by Trish, positive and negative evaluations are expected to be clarified, with detailed analyses of subsystems in the Attitude System to be given. The results suggest that Trish’s attitude towards China has changed a lot in her commentaries and the debate with Liu Xin—from negative to partly positive. It also appears that Trish maintained a positive attitude towards the United States while she changed her positive attitude towards the trade war into a negative one in her debate with Liu Xin.
The present study examines the role that feedback plays on the development of second language (L2) English learners’ writing accuracy over time. Earlier formal accounts and empirical works have focused on the relevance of corrective feedback (CF) in L2 writing learning (Ellis et al., 2008; Sheen, 2007), and what kind of CF (i.e. direct or indirect) has proved to be the most effective one, especially at low L2 levels (García Mayo and Labandibar, 2017; Ismail et al., 2008). We have analyzed 3 pieces of writing produced by 8 L2 English participants (aged 11 to 12). The participants were randomly divided into two groups, one of them received direct CF on their written tasks and the other group was exposed to indirect CF. Results revealed that both groups seemed to improve their mean scores from the pre-task to the post-task, regardless of the type of CF implemented. However, the direct CF group has proven to benefit more from teacher’s written CF, when compared to the indirect CF group. This is especially the case in the development of grammar accuracy.
Politics is a genre of language, and language is the manifestation of politics (Mazrui, 2008). Political discourse not only plays an important role in the process of national external communication but also conveys certain ideology and political intentions. Based on interpersonal function in Systemic Functional Grammar and using President Xi’s speech at the Extraordinary G20 Leaders’ Summit as the original data, this paper analyzes and explores how this speech can achieve discourse function through personal pronouns, mood, and modality. In addition, this paper reveals how various linguistic resources are used to realize interpersonal meaning in political discourse.
There is an obvious tendency and ample evidence to show Sylvia Plath’s representation of the gendered body throughout her poetry. However, inadequate attention has been paid to the evolution of her such kind of representation. Taking one of her early poems “Pursuit” and a later one “Daddy” as examples, this essay aims to explicate this evolution of representation. In her early poetry, her representation of gendered body centers on Freudian interest as seen in “Pursuit,” but in her later poems this representation changes to her political consciousness as is the case in “Daddy.” Therefore, this evolution embodies both her change of poetic subject matter and her concern with gender politics under the influence of the social culture.
Under the guidance of the theory of theme and rheme as well as thematic progression patterns, two significant components in Systemic Functional Linguistics, this paper discusses the thematic structure and thematic progression patterns of the Queen’s national speech “We will meet again!” which was delivered on April 5, 2020, when both England and the rest of the world were in the throes of the growing pandemic. With the use of quantitative and qualitative research methods, their distributions and the reasons are explored to figure out the thematic features, the effects, or the functions that have been achieved in Queen’s speech.
Pragmatic presupposition focuses on the study of the relationship between the speaker and the hearer at the time of communication and the language they used. It can effectively serve advertising language from the linguistic field. In other words, pragmatic presupposition can meet some of the requirements of the advertisements. Nowadays people confront a variety of commercial advertisements, such as food advertisements, drink advertisements, digital product and cosmetic advertisements, etc. In fact, advertising language is the core factor which determines the success or failure of one commercial advertisement. Most domestic and overseas scholars have studied advertising language through cooperative principles,rhetoric and systemic-functional grammar, etc. However, they do not pay enough attention to the pragmatic presupposition manifested in both Chinese and English cosmetic advertisements. Therefore, this paper conducts a comparative study based on previous studies of pragmatic presupposition with new data. The data analyzed in this study are taken from some major fashion magazines in America, United Kingdom and China, such as VOGUE, Cosmopolitan,Trends health,etc. These cosmetic advertisements were advertised in the recent 20 years. Through the analysis, it is found that there is no significant difference between Chinese and English cosmetic advertisements in terms of types of pragmatic presupposition manifested. Both Chinese and English advertisers mainly adopt four types of pragmatic presupposition: existential presupposition, factive presupposition, state presupposition and behavior presupposition, and state presupposition takes up the largest proportion. The present study provides a more comprehensive analysis of pragmatic presupposition and classification of it. In addition, the results of this study also could help advertisers and consumers increase their mutual understanding.
This paper analyses the structure patterns of code-switching quantitatively and qualitatively based on EFL classroom discourse. Through the detailed analysis, the paper finds that there are different structure patterns in which teachers often switch their codes in English classroom. These structure patterns are reflected in different language levels: words and phrases level, clausal and sentence level. The functions of code-switching are determined by those structure patterns that teachers will choose for different purposes in the process of teaching.
As an open social recourse and special language text, linguistic landscape, visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region Landry and Bourhis (1997), and presented on various signs or billboards publicly, can be used as a useful recourse in language learning. Shenzhen, the first Chinese special economic zone, has developed into a fast-growing innovative city. Compared to other cities, Shenzhen has more frequent communications with worldwide visitors. Therefore, its education should be more international and advanced, especially English learning, since English, the most widely used language, is being used in linguistic landscapes increasingly. However, nowadays tedious English learning content and learning methods are unable to meet training requirements of students’ English level in society. Therefore, considering the significance of linguistic landscape in humanities construction and English learning, the government and schools give great importance to the construction of campus linguistic landscape. Through reference to representative research literatures and comparative analysis, this study intends to explore the importance of linguistic landscape in English learning by analyzing differences in campus linguistic landscape between middle schools and universities within Shenzhen from the form and content by introducing the way in which linguistic landscape is presented. And different purposes of its application are introduced in order to understand the application and design of linguistic landscape in different campuses more comprehensively. The research also explores the influence of campus linguistic landscape on students’ English learning, from the perspective of informal environmental penetration, learning material, stirring interest, broadening vocabulary and knowledge and its close relationship with life. This paper adopts the Constructivist learning theory of Piaget (1970). Students establish knowledge about the external world in the process of interaction with the surrounding environment to develop their cognitive structure. This paper concludes that the integration of linguistic landscape can benefit from its educational function to conduct a practice-oriented, teacher-led and student-centered pattern of English learning and improve students’ English learning ability.
Given Folding Beijing’s great importance to Chinese science fictions after winning the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Novelette and Ken Liu’s active engagement in promoting modern Chinese literary works to go global, this paper endeavors to explain how the influences of ideology, poetics and patronage are displayed in Folding Beijing’s English translation from the perspective of Lefevere’s Rewriting Theory. Instead of focusing on the linguistic elements of the translation, the current study attempts to reveal the cultural, social, ideological, and poetical effects on the translator’s decision-making process and tries to explore the reasons for the novelette’s success. It is believed that this paper can, to a certain extent, not only provide beneficial guidance for future practitioners in this translation field, but also offer some reference for the study of translation of Chinese contemporary science fictions.
Speaking in English confidently is a challenging task but very crucial for university students. Graduates with good communication efficiency especially in the engineering field are greatly demanded in the current work industry. Performing confidently is not only important for scoring academic tasks but also to help expand the revenue of the companies at workplace. Thus, a pilot study was conducted to investigate the perceptions of a public technical university engineering undergraduates’ confidence level in speaking English. A mixed method design was employed where a survey and semi-structured interview were conducted for data collection. The participants were selected using purposive sampling method where a total number of 50 undergraduates provided valid responses to the online questionnaire and 5 undergraduates participated in the semi-structured interview. Descriptive statistics using Statistical Package for the Social Science Version 25.0 (SPSS version 25.0) and thematic analysis were adopted for data analyses. The results revealed three main areas that were identified as important to build the students’ confidence in speaking: applying manual skills, familiarization of vocabulary and correct usage of grammar. The findings also highlighted that the participants felt that more public speaking practices should be provided to them to improve their confidence level further in speaking English fluently.
This article is mainly focused on the protagonist Savitri of the novel The Dark Room and how she is alienated from herself, from the society and from the world and about her quest for marital identity. Savitri also goes through the crisis of discontent to the quest for happiness. Savitri of the ancient legend is a paragon of virtue and courage who confronts even Death to save her husband is finally victorious. Ironically unlike the legendary Savitri, Narayan’s Savitri chooses to leave home, husband and children once she comes to know of her husband’s infidelity. Contrary to the legend, Savitri is just an ordinary, amiable, housewife. She abandons her gambler and drunkard husband and her family. But her independence proves detrimental to Savitri’s familial peace. Narayan skillfully portrays her every action and in his ironic subtle fashion puts across the artificiality behind it. As a qualitative research, this researcher has taken the text as a ptimary source and interpreted it from existential point of view.
This study aims at stylistically analyzing Men in the Sun in terms of the use of rhetorical questions and polyphony. The main objective is to show the contribution of these stylistic features (rhetorical questions and use of polyphony) in construing meaning and heightening the aesthetic values of novella and show how focus on specific stylistic features helps in analyzing a literary text. The researchers used the analytical approach to examine how the use of rhetorical questions and polyphony helps in constructing the meaning of the novella and highlighting its main themes. This study will be helpful to students of literature who want to better understand stylistic analysis and how writers use stylistic devices to enhance the meaning they want to convey. The study could also serve as a springboard for further studies in this area and could promote academic discourse on stylistic analysis of various Arabic literary works in English translation.
Genesis claims that ancient languages were divinely diversified as the linguistic origin. In consistence, this article presents systematic evidence for biblical etymology related to all major body parts and organs. For instance, heart is to heat, brain is to burn, kidney is to kindle burnt offering, and muscle is to slice to the multiple. Sandal is sacred land, scared is sacred scarf, and tragedy is to tear garment. Both objective and abstract words exhibit biblical match, such as random and ransom as escaping scapegoat randomly chosen. Biblical etymology of morals 德, love 愛, real真, eternity 永, memory, necessity 必, secret 秘, accident, pardon 恕 and mister is also presented. Novel interpretation in biblical etymology is also presented for several affixes such as 辰, 者, per, and m/l+vowel+n. In definitive etymology, numerous words such as generation, espionage, pregnancy and agriculture are presented to bilingually match bible, especially the scripture of Moses, reflecting divine creation.
In a consumer society, "discourse" has become a way of creation. The narrative of object sets a new perspective, showing the non-material components of the material as much as possible, and people’s positive attitude towards the narrative mode also changes the focus of fashion design work. It is intended to analyze clothing narrative from the three aspects of fashion narrative suggestion, discourse structure and how fashion narrative is consumed.
Regarding the origin of language, Genesis claims that ancient languages were divinely diversified. This testimony presents systematic evidence for biblical etymology related to prophet and priest. Priesthood was pivotal in ancient culture, and religious worship is central to civilization. This testimony presents systematic and surprising evidence for relationship of prophet and priest to biblical etymology, indicating that the old testament culture and method of worship are extensively reflected by etymology of words.
More from English Literature and Language Review ELLR (20)
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This webinar will introduce you to my framework, highlighting the key competencies I identified from my research. It will also show how anybody involved in language teaching (any language, not just English!), teacher training, managing schools or developing language learning materials can benefit from using the framework.
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Enhancing College Students’ Speaking Under the Context of Multimodality
1. English Literature and Language Review
ISSN(e): 2412-1703, ISSN(p): 2413-8827
Vol. 4, Issue. 11, pp: 175-178, 2018
URL: https://arpgweb.com/journal/journal/9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32861/ellr.411.175.178
Academic Research Publishing
Group
175
Original Research Open Access
Enhancing College Students’ Speaking Under the Context of Multimodality
Jinxiu Jing
School of Foreign Languages, Leshan Normal University, Leshan, China
Abstract
How a teacher presents information and motivates students to talk in English can seriously decide the efficiency of
an English class; therefore, teachers need to explore sufficient approaches to stimulate students to talk. Coaching
students to be involved in the process of communication can greatly satisfy individualized English learning. The
author here will analyze teaching speaking based on multimodality and put forward some suggestions for English
learners and teachers.
Keywords: College students; Speaking; Multimodality.
CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0
1. Introduction
With high frequencies of international communications, the importance of speaking obviously has caught the
attention of English teaching, especially urgent and necessary to prepare students with basic speaking skills in
college English classes. The Requirement of College English Teaching (Higher Education Department of the
Ministry of Education, 2007) makes that “to foster students’ overall ability, especially speaking and listening,
ensuring them to communicate naturally and successfully both in spoken and written form”. It calls for English
teaching to focus on cultivating the competence of communicating freely and efficiently in the process of English
learning class (Halliday, 2000); while the reality is still a big challenge to implement the these principles, because
the English classes are still occupied with rote-learning, lectures, and passive role of students. These boring models
of English teaching can never benefit the education of qualified English speakers.
Along the development of new technology, English teaching featuring teachers talking and lectures will barely
meet the requirements of various communications. In this situation, multimodality-based teaching comes into being
and offers teachers and learners opportunities to construct a context for English learning to take place in, which will
greatly promote mutual understandings (Li and Yin, 2012).
2. Multimodality
In 1990s, educators all over the world had probed into the application of multimodality. R.Barthes was one the
first ones to analyze it and he published one paper elaborating on the interactions between images and language;
Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001) put that other signs except for words can be used in defining senses, like image,
sound, colors, animated pictures, etc. Modality refers to approaches, media, including various semiotics like
speaking, high technology, images, colors, and music etc., while these vehicles can be employed simultaneously in a
logical way to enhance communication or learning, and it is the concept of multimodality. Li (2012) defines that one
text, embodied in more than one sign and expression with two or more senses, can be divided into one approach or
two with its complete meaning clearly disclosed; while Gu (2007) takes that modality is a kind of interaction
between human beings, and the external environment(people, machinery, objects and animals, etc.) with senses like
sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste (Kress and Van, 1996). Numerous studies about the application of
multimodality have proved that it is efficient and interest-arousing in motivating students to communicate more in
English class. Therefore, learning based on multimodality will greatly change the mechanical and tedious language
teaching, learning can be fun with different language learners (O’Halloran, 2008). Based on tons of studies, the
author here especially summarizes the prevailing problems in speaking class in Chinese universities and concludes
some useful suggestions here.
3. Problems in Teaching Speaking
3.1. Overcrowded Class
It is a common phenomenon to have English class with a large number of students in China, and the seat will be
45-90 on average. This is hard for teachers to carry out activities and pay attention to individual’s performance.
Besides from the issue of disorder and discipline in the big class, to teachers in the college, some are busy with the
overloaded teaching tasks, English class will be worse if a teacher is one accustomed to old style of lectures to an
overcrowded class. They do not have the awareness and time to infill new ideas and multimodal stimulus into the
class, and the students always have a struggling time in learning English, because there are endless exercises and
lectures from the teacher. Worse still, students with poor meta-cognitive competence will go awry in this tedious
class, and they will play cellphones or wander.
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3.2. Influence from Learning Habits in High School
In the high school, students have to take the College Entrance Exam, and they need to do a lot of exercise
silently, for they have to memorize the words and practice the grammars and some thinking processing drills. They
have been used to this kind of learning, though listening is required, just a small part in the exam, and draw little
attention. On the other hand, they have the habit of receiving stacks of assignments without knowing whether they
need to do the mechanical exercises or not. In this way, they do not know how to search appealing ways of language
learning, trapped in the packs of written exercise. These factors directly lead to their passive state of learning,
without knowing that they can take up the responsibility to find a personal way to make English learning fun through
watching video, drawing, listening, speaking, etc.
3.3. Unbalanced Distribution of Learning Resources
One common phenomenon is that some students are nervous about that their pronunciation sounds strange and
some even can not make a whole complete sentence. Apart from the personal habits of learning, another factor lies in
that those students failed to resort to standard pronunciation and tactful teachers with flexible and efficient teaching
experience. Students need a mentor to guide them to the right resources of English learning and they need a
competent teacher to tell them how to learn easily and in a relaxed way. While it is unavoidable students from small
towns or the remote areas lack for the superior materials and teaching faculties around them, which leads to their
poor performance in speaking. These students choose to sit and watch silently when there is an activity of speaking,
because they do not dare to voicing out their ideas.
4. Principles
It is easy for a teacher to introduce pictures and sounds into the English class, but the multimodality-based
teaching will not be that easy: to stack different materials and senses together; instead, a good class of modality-
based teaching is supposed to be in an organized way considering various rules:
4.1. Focusing on the Goal of the Teaching Contents
Modality does not mean it is good looking to insert a picture into the PPT; a good teacher will consider what
will be the best combination of senses to make students comprehend the core idea and how to help them understand
the learning contents. Using pictures sounds and using these materials efficiently are absolutely two things to a class!
Before deciding what materials can be employed, the teacher should seriously think about the goal of that class, and
the main purpose is not to draw attention to the additional stuff, but how to assist and strengthen students’
comprehension through these approaches. Multimodality-based approaches can be a final goal as well can be a
process to involve students to think and talk from various perspectives.
4.2. Students-Centered View
To ensure the efficiency of the class, and push students to speak, the teachers are supposed to give chances of
discussion and talking to students first. Traditionally, teacher stands in the front of the classroom, and students are
listening and taking notes, receiving knowledge but not seriously digesting. Teachers now in a multimodality
classroom is not a detector, instead, an organizer of the class discussion, a helper when students need someone to
explain from different angles of the an issue in the form of graphs, and other ways of presentation, a partner with the
silent learners, an observer when the students need someone to monitor their presentation, a discipline manager when
the students are busy with analyzing jobs, etc. All these above imply that we teachers need to think for the students
and encourage them to demonstrate and explore by themselves in an English class with their favorite way of
learning.
5. Suggested Approaches to Promoting Speaking
Gu (2007) defines the process of learning based on multimodality in three steps: learners extract information
from the outside world. And they employ all senses to relate to materials; digesting and constructing meanings in
their mind by generating connections with materials; mastering practicing skills through activities (Mehrabian and
Susan, 1967), in which process learners obtains not only the written form information but nonverbal ways of
communication. According to him, teachers need to provide chances for students to obtain materials and chances to
practice in a safe way. And the author here tries to explore some suggestions to stimulate students to speak.
5.1. Offering Sufficient Input
At the beginning of English class, teachers can observe the problems of speaking, and they should set a plan to
help students. Generally, they can encourage students to watch some short videos about pronunciations and some of
the techniques in reading. According to the authors experience, many Chinese students are unable to distinguish
between /v/and/w/, /i:/and/i/, /a/and/ae/, /e/and/ei/, so teachers had better show some pictures to students, at the same
time check their way of pronunciation. Besides, there are some resources on English Dub, WeChat, the websites, and
these are attainable to most students. The only problem is that they do not know where to start though they want to
improve their English speaking. At the same time, TED speech online and some interesting videos online can give
students’ ways to imitate in sense groups, and pick some basic expressions to communicate and this way can also
provide them with techniques of nonverbal communications such as facial expressions, gestures, tones etc.
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5.2. Various Activities as Stimulus
Multimedia is just one way of realizing multimodality-based teaching in English class and it is not possible for
us to just present videos to students, we can also encourage them to think and try to speak. Here, do not put too much
pressure on them, and just wait and allow some slow learners to observe and imitate peers. When having listening
class, the authors first handle the words in forms of explanations and association with students, then encourage them
to listen and finish the tasks in the exercise, and then encourage them to read the script and then focus on some
important lines so that they can imitate and summarize the useful tips of communication. In the process of teaching
Tony Trivisono’s American Dream, the author uses these steps to help students to talk: first, dealing with some key
words with pictures; then, asking students to make sentences with the words with some cued pictures with different
topics; thirdly, guiding students to read the first paragraph and find out the basic information about Tony; forth,
listing the words in a mind map, and ask them to pretend that they were Tony to make a self-introduction of himself;
fifth, reading paragraph 1-10, ticking out how many times of the broken English “I mow your lawn”, and analyze the
plan, the implied meaning and the correct expression of the sentience; lastly, listening to the recording, and inviting
stunts to act the part out in groups of three. In this process, teacher uses pictures, listening, mind-map, group work,
words and discussions, which are of a multimodal approach to encourage students to learn and talk in a logic way.
5.3. Guidance from Teachers and Peers
When the freshmen come into the college English class, they are excited but expecting for new modes of
English learning. Therefore, teachers are responsible for guiding them to explore new ways of learning, and it starts
from the learning ideals: first, they are supposed to take up responsibility of practicing English after class due to the
limited class hour a week, and they need to speak out what they have learned in class to consolidate and reflect;
secondly, teachers can introduce fif, pigai, and more useful online resources for students so that they will know
where to find the information: making a plan with a tiny goal and getting the strategies of memorizing words like:
following some public accounts about words memorizing, where students can find the collocations and example
sentences on it; besides, teachers can set a group , and share one or two sentences in it at certain time every day,
encouraging them to imitate the lines and check every day. These are policies from teachers, with the purpose of
guiding students wherever they need help. Then, the teachers can have some assistant students to help them if the
teacher is too busy: we can choose the student with better pronunciation to help the peers, and we can put the
students of different levels in one group and they can have a chance to help each other and the needy students can
observe and get more attention from their peers or roommates.
5.4. Keeping Track of Personal Assessment
Meta-cognitive sense is of vital to a qualified and efficient English learner, because it is tightly related to their
self stimulation and efficacy. The college students emergently need to know what they themselves lack for and how
they have proceeded over a time; they first need to grow into an independent learner, and then can they improve and
learn much faster. About the speaking, the leaners need to keep a track of their performance and apply multimodal
ways to have a summary: they can practice the imitating before practicing and after practicing, so that they
themselves can feel the progress; they can record the grades online, and, then make a chart; they can writing a
summary of their learned techniques on the website of https://www.pigai.org/?ssl=on, and then post the passage in
the website of https://www.fifedu.com/iplat/html/index.html, and read it out; they can talk to their friends and ask
teachers for help settle their problems of speaking. All these are example ways for students to practice their English
speaking more than in just one mechanical mode.
6. Conclusion
Teaching speaking on the basis of multimodal approach is urgent and necessary considering the challenges and
requirements of cultivating a qualified English learner and all-round developed graduate. To teachers, we are
supposed to positively guide students in different forms of activities and offer them chances and approaches to
practice speaking. To students, they need to take up the responsibility of learning in an individualized ways and
make up the weakness in English learning and explore more ways to practice speaking.
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