Jewit (2002) explained that “multimodality is a combination, which includingimages, gestures, speech, gestures, music, writing, and new forms of these elements’construction ” (p. 175).
2.2 Theoretical Basis of Multimodality
Social semiotics and systemic functional linguistics have an important influenceon multimodality and the key foundation of theoretical is systemic functionallinguistics.
2.2.1 Systematic Functional Linguistics
Halliday (2004) pointed out that “systemic functional linguistics, also known asSFL, was the study of the relationship between the language and its functions in thesocial environment” (p. 29).
The social functions of language was of importance ,which was pointed out inthe systemic linguists ,and the same important is how to realize these social functions .They focused on the discovery and description of various language variants due to thedifferent social situations, and the illustration of these social functions and theindividual variants. Therefore, systematic functional linguistics was more easilyapplied to sociolinguistics and the language teaching, and it was also closely related to stylistics.
Halliday (2004) explained that “systematic functional linguistics pays moreattention to the illustration of the languages and the variants” (p. 30). Systemlinguistics adopted the continuum to describe difficult and obscure linguisticphenomenons. And the “scale of delicacy” was also mentioned in it.
The most appropriate theoretical of multimodality was the theory of systemicfunctional linguistics, because it did not need to transform to adapt to the new purposeof the theoretical framework. Although multimodality seemed to expand the scope ofits research, the theory of systemic functional linguistics itself can be directly used asits theoretical framework without any changes.
Chapter 3 Methodology.............................. 28
3.1 Research Questions.................................... 28
3.2 Subjects................................................ 28
3.3 Instruments........................................29
Chapter 4 The First-round Action Research............................34
4.1 Identifying Problems.........................................34
4.2 Making the Action Plan............................................34
4.3 Implementing the Action Plan........................................37
Chapter 5 The Second-round Action Research...........................52
5.1 Identifying Problems........................................52
5.2 Adjustment of the Action Plan.......................52
5.3 Implementing the Action Plan..............................53
Chapter 5 The Second-round Action Research
5.1 Identifying Problems
There were some problems in the implementation of multimodality, whichshould be improved in the second-round of action research based on the results of thefirst-round action research.
First of all, the fancy pictures and videos may reduce the student’s attentionfocus on the class. Sometimes they ignore the important points of the lesson when theteacher explaining the meaning of words. Because they prefer various fantasy photosto content of learning.
Secondly, students spent less time on memorizing and the usage of words anddid not remember them forever, especially in the spelling of words. Most of studentsmemorize new words in the class and they did not review these words in time afterclass. For students, the memory of words is instantaneous.
Through the summary and results of the first-round action study, the researchermade some restructurings and upgrades to the second round of action research, inorder to improve the effectiveness of the second-round action research.
Chapter 6 Conclusion
6.1 Major Findings
The results show that the multimodality has a good effect on the vocabularyacquisition. There was an obvious correlation between students’ test scores andteaching