Chen Li: The Significance of Multimodal Discourse in English Courses

The linguistic mode in multimodal discourse is specifically the “linguistic” mode, and it should not be confused with the “language” used in everyday discourse, such as body language, symbolic language, and color language. In multimodal discourse, body language, symbolic language, and color language are all considered nonlinguistic modes.

Teaching multimodal discourse is fundamentally similar to traditional discourse teaching, focusing on the aspect of English language culture. From the perspective of curriculum education and English teaching, there is no essential difference in the teaching focus and difficulties between multimodal discourse and traditional reading, listening, and other monomodal discourse. Both aim to guide students to correctly decode the form of discourse to obtain information and construct meaning.

Students’ advantages. Compared to the linguistic mode (Linguistic mode), the other four modes in multimodal discourse, whether charts, icons, images, or sound effects, colors, animations, generally do not pose cognitive challenges for the generation of students who have grown up “reading images.” As “digital natives,” middle and primary school students are generally more familiar with various nonlinguistic modes in multimodal discourse than their teachers.

The difference between native and foreign languages. Chinese students’ understanding and meaning construction processes for English multimodal discourse differ significantly from those for Chinese multimodal discourse, resulting in different teaching focuses and difficulties. When students understand multimodal discourse of the same difficulty in English textbooks or outside the classroom, the difficulties mostly lie in the English language. At this time, images, videos, and other nonlinguistic modes can serve as aids to help understand the context or clues for academic understanding of the English language.

Culture aspects. Nonlinguistic modes often include culturally significant elements, such as certain colors, symbols, gestures, etc., which have different special meanings in English culture compared to Chinese culture, potentially affecting the overall meaning conveyed and understood in multimodal discourse. In teaching multimodal discourse, students should be guided to pay sufficient attention to these nonlinguistic modal elements.

The use of nonlinguistic modes. In foreign language multimodal discourse teaching, the functions of nonlinguistic modes are usually reflected in two aspects: one is to stimulate students’ reading interest and motivation, and the other is that students can activate their existing life experiences and cognition through recognizing these nonlinguistic elements, serving as scaffolds to improve the speed and accuracy of language understanding.

English teachers need to keep pace with the times, actively understanding various nonlinguistic modes familiar to students. In multimodal discourse teaching, actively utilizing nonlinguistic modes to create rich contexts that align with students’ cognitive experiences, guiding students to fully utilize their existing foundational cognition and life experiences, focusing on the synergy of multiple modes in conveying meaning, integrating the enhancement of language abilities, thinking qualities, aesthetic abilities, and other comprehensive qualities into the entire process of multimodal discourse analysis and understanding. Furthermore, multimodal discourse teaching usually does not require any special “design.”

Specific Requirements for “Multimodal Discourse” in Curriculum Standards

The following is the specific description of “multimodal discourse” teaching in the “Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standards (2022 Edition)” for primary and junior high school (high school section omitted. Please refer to English curriculum standards (2017/2020)):

1) Curriculum Content Section, mentions the language skill requirement of “seeing.” “Seeing” usually refers to the skill of understanding meanings using graphics, tables, animations, symbols, and videos in multimodal discourse. Understanding multimodal discourse requires not only traditional reading skills but also the ability to observe information in charts and understand the meanings of symbols and animations.

2) Content Requirements Section: Level 1 and Level 1+ teaching requirements “infer the meanings conveyed by images, sounds, colors, etc., in multimodal discourse (such as animations, book covers and backs, invitation cards, and greeting cards)”; Level 2 and Level 2+ teaching requirements “understand the meanings conveyed by multimodal discourse (such as animations, posters, book covers and backs, etc.), extract key information”; Level 3 and Level 3+ teaching requirements “understand the meanings conveyed by non-text resources in multimodal discourse.”

3) Academic Quality Section Level 3 (7-9 grades) requires “to understand the main content of multimodal discourse (such as broadcasts, TV programs, etc.) and obtain key information.”

4) Curriculum Implementation Section, requires English teachers “to enhance the effectiveness of information technology usage. Teachers should fully recognize that modern information technology not only provides multimodal means, platforms, and spaces for English teaching but also offers abundant resources and opportunities for language learning and usage across time and space, playing an important supporting role in creating good learning situations, promoting educational concept updates, and transforming teaching methods.”

Related Requirements for Teachers in the Standards

The “Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standards” (2022 Edition) states: In the digital information age, English teachers need to keep up with the times, continuously improve their information literacy, especially focusing on the unique discourse functions of various nonlinguistic modes in information transmission and meaning construction. Information technology provides abundant modal means, tools, and platforms for English teaching, and English teachers can fully utilize and integrate these resources to create meaningful and interesting contexts to enhance English learning effectiveness and promote the development of students’ core competencies, thereby better achieving the overall goal of curriculum education.

Keeping Up with the Times, Staying True to One’s Original Intent

Over the past two to three decades, the attitudes towards multimodal foreign language teaching or second language teaching in the international foreign language teaching or second language teaching field have not been consistent. Similar to the long-standing debate between different schools on Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT), there have been differing claims such as strong multimodal (Strong Version) and weak multimodal (Weak Version). Currently, it seems that weak multimodal may be more suited to our national, teaching, and learning situations. In foreign language teaching, while actively exploring how to fully utilize multimodal resources, it is essential to remain true to the original intent of foreign language curriculum education, especially to be alert to the misleading effects of various formalism and technicism that may detract from the essence of teaching for both teachers and students.

Two Related Concepts: Multimodal and Multimedia

There is also a closely related concept to “multimodal,” called “multimedia.” The distinction between these two concepts is still under discussion and there is no consensus. A relatively consistent view is that the distinction mainly lies in the different perspectives: “multimodal” emphasizes the way or mode of discourse construction; “multimedia” emphasizes the technical means or tools. When the distinction between the two is not particularly emphasized, the two terms may sometimes be used synonymously.