A Study of Meaning Coordination Between Gestures,Postures,Facial Expressions and Scaffolding Language During English Language Teaching
Taking the systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis as its analytical framework,with the teaching videos from 9 teachers in the comprehensive English course group of a university as its data,this study explores how gestures,postures and facial expressions and language work together to generate meaning,serving as scaffolding.The results show that:(1)Teachers use the language modality the most frequently,mainly including four types of language scaffolding strategies:questioning,explanation,modelling and feedback;(2)Gesture is the most frequently used non-verbal modality,which is associated with language functioning as explanation,emphasis,guidance,invitation and pointing;(3)Teachers have less variation in postures and facial expressions,usually accompanied by questioning and modelling strategies to demonstrate their authority,and accompanied by explanation strategies to create a harmonious classroom atmosphere.This study provides implications for college English teachers on how to coordinate verbal and non-verbal resources to achieve effective classroom communication.