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Article published In: Chinese as a Second Language (漢語教學研究—美國中文教師學會學報)
Vol. 56:3 (2021) ► pp.229–254

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A multimodal approach to the technological representations in CFL textbooks

 | Dublin City University
 | Dublin City University
Published online: 8 April 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/csl.21002.zha
Abstract
The study scrutinizes the intermodal relations and interactive meaning-making of the textual and visual semiotics involved in modern technology representation, which indicates the engagement of authentic communication in language learning. The findings show that both textbooks show attempts to capture the up-to-date technology of modern life. Learners tend to be involved with the interpretation of the indexical relations between the visual and textual resources in one textbook, while the other textbook consists of a few texts and images that are not indexically related and are less likely to be interpreted interactively. Findings indicate the importance of being aware of the different emphases of these two textbooks through multimodal research, for the purpose of effective adaptations in CFL teaching and learning.
摘要
以两本中文作为外语的课本作为研究对象，以课本里面的图像和文字所表现的现代技术为研究目标，本文详细阐述了文本和视觉符号的多模式联运关系及互动意义构建，展示了真实交流是如何参与到语言学习中的。研究结果表明，两本课本都试图捕捉现代生活里的最新科技。其中一本较多地鼓励学习者参与解读对视觉符号和文本资源之间的关联关系，而在另一课本中，更多的是彼此无关联且不太可能被交互解释的文本和图像。这些结果体现了多模式研究方式对教科书的重要性，而且本文的研究验证了这种多模式研究方式能对课本的不同侧重点提供深度解析，并能有效地应用于教学和学习中。
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous textbook research: CFL and other foreign languages
  • 3.Multimodal approach to textbook analysis
  • 4.Data and methods
  • 5.Data analysis
    • 5.1Instances of technology
    • 5.2Indexical relation between image and text
    • 5.3Three voices for the interpretant
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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