A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of College English Classrooms Based on ELAN

Cases Study of Grand Prize of the 13th “SFLEP Cup” College English Comprehensive Course Group

Abstract

This paper analyses the classroom discourses of the teacher who won the grand prize in the college English comprehensive course group of the 13th Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press Cup (SFLEP Cup) from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), and under the guidance of Zhang Delu’s framework for multimodal foreign language classroom teaching through ELAN 5.2 multimodal discourse analysis software, intending to reveal the use of modalities in each stage of the teacher’s classroom, the relationship between modalities, and the relationship between teaching objectives, methods, and modal choices. The study shows that the auditory modality of teacher discourse is the primary modality. In contrast, the visual, behavioral, and environmental modalities play a supplementary role. Effective synergy between modalities is crucial to constructing meaning, and inappropriate synergy can have a negative impact. In addition, the choice of teaching methods directly affects the choice of modality, and these two aspects work closely together to achieve the teaching goals. Multimodal teaching has demonstrated significant effectiveness in college English classrooms, and teachers can achieve the teaching goals, enhance the teaching effect, and increase students’ participation and interest in learning through the judicious application of various modalities.