Abstract:

With the development of science and technology, classroom teaching is no longer confined to any single language teaching method but instead delivered through a variety of symbolic or semiotic modes. Over the past 30 years, the application of multimodality in language learning and teaching has been widely valued and promoted by scholars represented by van Leeuwen (1996). On this very note, China is committed to curriculum reform and multimodal teaching, which emphasizes students' autonomous learning and strives to arouse students' interest in learning. Specifically, multimodal teaching has received enthusiastic response from its application in the college English writing courses in China. This paper briefly discusses the application of multimodality in an English academic writing course from curriculum design to multi-source evaluation in a Chinese university. We included 38 sophomores majoring in English as the subjects and also different multimodal tasks through the whole course. For the curriculum evaluation, students and teachers gave positive feedback to the design and the application of the multimodality. The paper contributes to the field with insights on a systematic multi-source evaluation system. We ended up the paper with brief discussion on how teacher agency, belief, and practice may help instructors with curriculum design and implementation.

Keywords:

Multimodality, academic writing, English language learners, curriculum design, evaluation.