With the development of globalization, the world becomes a small village. Thecommunication and cooperation among countri es are more and more frequent than before. English, as the most widely used language in the world, is becoming more and more important. English teaching is given more attention to than ever before. Since English is a tool for communication, the purpose of English teaching is to enablestudents to use the language to communicate in real life. Junior high school students are curious about interesting things. But their self-monitoring learning ability is notstrong enough and they can’t concentrate on their textbooks for a long time, whichrequire English teachers to stimulate students’ interest to learn English, to cultivatetheir learning ability, and to help students establish a sense of lifelong learning.As we all know, vocabulary is a basic element in language learning. A famouslinguist Wilkins (1972) once pointed out that people can convey little without grammar, but convey nothing without words. The larger one’s vocabulary is, the morehecan understand and express, and his ability of listening, speaking, reading andwriting can also be improved accordingly. To some extent, one’s size of vocabularydetermines his level of language learning. Therefore, vocabulary learning plays an importantrolein language l earning, and even relates to the efficiency of languagelearning. Many junior high school students cannot express them selves fluentlybecause of their shortage of vocabulary. Learning vocabulary in aneffective way can help solve the problems, as well as prepare themselves for further study.Nowadays, many English teachers have changed their teaching ideas. They teach students not only what it is, but also how to use it. Teachers try varied teachingmethods to make it interesting when teaching listening, speaking, reading and writing.But vocabulary teach ing is usually ignor ed. The current situ ation of Englishvocabulary teaching in our country is as follows.
......
Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Multimodal DiscourseAnalysis
People usually communicate with each other in a variety of ways at the same time, and not just in a single method. The “way” or “method” is what people callmode. Mode, to some extent, is a kind of sensory which people feel the outside world,such as visual sense, auditory sense, and tactile sense. Gu Yueguo (2007) pointed thatmode is the means that people’s senses interact with the outside world. And the toolspeople feel with, such eyes, ears, and hands, are called media. People using one mode to communicate is called single modal discourse, and people using a variety of modesto communicate is called multimodal discourse.From 1990s, more and more linguists pa id attention to m ultimodal discourseanalysis. Van Leeuwen (2005) once defined multimodal discourse as the combinationof different semiotic modes in a communicative artifact or event. Zhang Delu (2009)put forward that m ultimodal discourse referred to the phenom enon that peop lecommunicate with each other by using their various senses, such as visuals ,auditory sense, as well as tactile sense, through languages, images, sounds, and so on.However, during the process of communica tion, a lot of m eaning is expressed by some otherfactors except language, for example, the speed and tone of the speech, the gestures and facial expressions of the speakers, and the surrounding environment.Therefore, when people communicate with each other, a variety of senses wor ktogether instead of a single sense.Zhu Yongsheng (2007) proposed two criteria of multimodal discourse. The firstmethod is to identify how m any types of sense is involved. Mu ltimodal discourseinvolves more than two sense at the same time. This method is generally recognizedby the current linguists. The second way is to identify the semiotic system. Forexample, comic books involves only a visual mode, but it includes text, pictures aswell as some changes of colour.
