Exploring the Multimodal Features of Courseware for Children's Live Online English Lessons: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Abstract

As the digital carrier of knowledge and the visual support to the teaching, the courseware for live online English lessons targeted at Chinese children involves a variety of semiotic resources jointly communicating meaning. However, there is great variety and complexity to be found in the way lesson providers design the courseware, particularly in terms of the use of image, verbiage and typography in the process of meaning construction. Taking a socio-semiotic, multimodal discourse analytic approach, the present study tries to reveal the multimodal features of the digital courseware, focusing on the examination of the visual and typographic features through an investigation into the semiotic system of images in relation to representational, interactive and compositional meanings and the characteristic features of typography. It is hoped that the study can deepen our understanding of how the courseware makes meaning through the different choices of semiotic resources and bring some supportive implications for the effective design of multimodal courseware best for young English learners.