Cultivation of Vocational Students’ English Practical Ability based on
Multimodal Theory
Jingrong Shu
Hunan Railway Professional Technology College, Zhuzhou, Hunan, 412001, China
Keywords: Multimodal theory, vocational students, English practical ability.
Abstract: Disadvantages have been gradually exposed in the fixed mode formed by vocational English teaching
during a long period. With the deep exploration of teaching reform, educators continuously enhance
students’ practical ability for their value realization in future professional post. As an advanced element
with multi-angle and profundity in vocational English teaching activities, multimodal theory will provide
new ideas in aspects of teaching condition and network technique as well as college-enterprise combination.
Meanwhile, it can also significantly improve English learning of vocational college students.
1 INTRODUCTION
With the popularization of higher education,
teaching activities have widespread promotion in
various vocational colleges. They act as the bond of
schools and society, aiming to provide tremendous
young professionals for social production. However,
considering weak school condition and teaching
resource of most vocational colleges, there is a doubt
about the effect of vocational education as well as
the professional quality of their graduates, which
also concern students, parents and enterprises.
Although currently the government has increased
funding and policy support for vocational education,
more efforts of schools and educators are required in
complex teaching links in order to really turn the
input into reasonable educational output (Yang
Wenge, 2014). It is necessary to consolidate
vocational education advantages and introduce new
teaching concept and mode for the improvement of
teaching work and the quality optimization of talent
cultivation during the long-term practice and run-in
period. The teaching exploration, with social
responsibility and significance, needs front-line
teachers’ breakthroughs from fix thinking mode as
well as strong coordination and support of students
and their colleges (Liu Shuqi, 2014). These
measures will ensure smooth process of the
improvement activities and bring good
achievements.
2 STATUE OF VOCATIONAL
STUDENTS’ ENGLISH
PRACTICAL ABILITY
As a fundamental subject, English has a growingly
consolidated place in education field. Increasing
proportion of English course is considered in various
teaching reform and examination adjustment,
indicating the cultivation of students’ English ability
is still the key emphasis in future educational work.
It needs attention and more efforts from schools,
teachers and students. With the rapid
internationalization of society and economy, there
will be enormous job openings, which will give new
challenges for internal students’ English learning. In
the meanwhile, various industries require plenty of
special vocational employees with related
professionals knowledge, and more expect that these
employees can contribute for the perfection of
departmental work system and the internationalized
transformation with their stronger English practical
ability and high-level professional quality (Luo Ying,
2014).
Like most English major teaching, vocational
English education presents certain limitation with its
fast development in China. Seen from basic teaching
condition, there is a lack of normalization in English
textbooks adopted by vocational college students. In
the early days, these colleges with short running
time had no special English textbooks, adopting the
99
Shu J.
Cultivation of Vocational Studentsâ
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A
´
Z English Practical Ability based on Multimodal Theory.
DOI: 10.5220/0006444600990102
In ISME 2016 - Information Science and Management Engineering IV (ISME 2016), pages 99-102
ISBN: 978-989-758-208-0
Copyright
c
2016 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
99
same textbooks of undergraduate education. This
behavior ignored the characteristic and special social
responsibility of vocational education, and caused
trouble to teacher-student English course activities
during the practice. Students failed to adapt course
difficulty and schedule, which influenced their
learning quality and the enthusiasm in English
subjects. In the next years, the government unified
teaching textbooks for the regulation of teaching
activities and teacher behavior in colleges. However,
there are cases where some colleges still use self-
compiled English textbooks to meet students’ further
demand of specialization. Only the complexity in
teaching textbooks, consequently, has already made
vocational education in trouble of management and
development. Meanwhile, with some colleges’
limitation in infrastructure construction as well as
teaching and teacher resource, it is worrisome for
English ability of vocational students. In addition,
teachers are helpless for cultivation of students’
practical ability due to the fixed mode of exam-
oriented education in schools. With monotonous
inflexible curriculum provision and traditional
lecture-based learning, students have become line
products of vocational college English major.
Lacking certain application and management ability
of English knowledge, they still stay at the initial
stage of English learning.
From the above situation, graduates, educated by
this vocational English education, is hardly
appreciated by employers and is difficult to realize
their career ambition. For economic specialty
students, they have to master English knowledge
related with commodity information, transportation,
trade negotiation, contract correspondence, etc., and
can apply the English ability of listening, speaking,
reading and writing to work. Only in this practical
way can vocational English embody its practical
significance and help vocational college students to
realize their career planning and life value.
3 APPLICATION OF
MULTIMODAL THEORY IN
CULTIVATION OF ENGLISH
PRACTICAL ABILITY
Multimodal theory is modal symbols including
language, image, characters, behavior, etc. It is
applied in daily communication among social
members to optimize common knowledge
information transfer and feeling expression with its
meticulous quantized standard. The purpose of this
mode is to change traditional single-mode theory
and to fully explore individual inner potential in
senses of slight, smell, hearing and touch. With its
application in different practical activity, the more
scientific and reasonable theory can be generally
adopted in various fields.
3.1 Expanding teaching forms with
equipments
Today’s English education is more than words,
sentence pattern and grammar. In vocational fields
with high professionalism, especialy, corresponding
teaching activity reform cannot be limited to the
increase of teaching section or the adjustment of
teaching requirement. Pointed by On A Synthetic
Theoretical Framework for Multimodal Analysis,
multimodal exploration in aspects of culture,
language environment, content and expression is
influenced by specific behavior of educators. And to
some extent, it is also affected by non-language
teaching attachments and implements.
It is suggested that English education teaching be
a pioneer in utilizing various advanced technologies.
With certain material and economic basis, these
technologies from education are applied in education
for the huge demand of society. Diversified teaching
tools are necessary to keep teaching activities up to
date. Especially in the application of multimodal
theory to vocational English, schools and teachers
are more supposed to actively find various
possibilities with diversified equipments and
teaching form to realize multimode of students’
English practical ability cultivation.
Currently, widely used teaching tools have
possessed multimedia devices such as projector, PPT
and voice prompt system, helping students visually
see course content. Besides, vision-oriented teaching
form can easily present fuzzy language and ideology
with images or characters. This provides free
choices for students’ absorption and comprehension,
and further emancipates students’ mind. Students are
encouraged for the thought and attempt of practical
English in language, movement and expression in
order to arouse their stronger learning desire.
The breakthrough of traditional teaching pattern
provides teachers a greater unlimited space. For each
student’s professional English competence, teachers’
deep inquiry and survey can increase the pertinence
and effectiveness of their teaching activities. With
learning platform possessed high-tech elements,
students can clearly know basic information such as
major requirements of English competence,
emphasis of major-related jobs and their present
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English practical ability, and then rationally
schedule their school life. This reform is due to
teachers’ accurate choice of multimode as well as
their scientific control of sensorial utilization and
environmental factor. Consequently, the main idea
of multimodal theory is conveyed, which is
maximally beneficial to the teaching and learning.
3.2 Efficient teaching system formed by
network
Currently, work of various industries is widely
integrated into information network where data and
information can be easily collected and collated and
even be quickly called and conveyed if needed.
Education field, cradle of these knowledge and skill,
is more supposed to utilize integrated and networked
hi-tech tools for the upgrade of specific work.
Vocational English teaching can find the most
suitable curriculum provision and teaching content
with reference to network textbooks. According to
English learning effect of vocational students at
different stages, timely adjustment and upgrade of
such textbooks can avoid the discrepancy of
teaching activities and textbooks. Multimodal theory
emphasizes teachers’ cultivation of students’
practical ability in various English teaching forms.
Teachers are required to focus on whether students
have mastered enough practical English vocabulary
and grammar, whether they can skillfully apply what
they learned in reality and whether they can quickly
adjust to new environments and interpersonal
relationships. These proposed new contents and
standards, which are far beyond initial teaching
requirements, not only indicate more comprehensive
emphasis of modern society on talent quality, but
also can gradually adapt to the wide existence of
integration and network technique in daily life.
Teachers can properly balance and classify each
student’s ability of listening, reading, speaking and
writing and even their practical ability, creative
ability and divergent ability, and then integrate
related data into special information database to
form archives. The database is a direct record and
reflection of students’ English learning and can
effectively urge their active learning. Additionally,
the database also provides reference data for training
programs of vocational colleges, connecting
teaching activities with modern technology.
As the core role in multimodal teaching pattern,
information concretely includes course content,
teachers’ language expression and students’
feedback and interaction. After the integration of
these activities into network system, it can be
qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated about
teaching results, input-output ratio and inherent
potential. And the pattern operation can even
provide reliable recommendations for teaching
improvement. Consequently, only the network of
teaching activities has already largely reduce
teachers’ working strength and decrease their futile
action in teaching process. Meanwhile, it forms a
virtuous circle between function and effect of
vocational English with high teaching standard. On
this basis, vocational colleges can expand network
technique to other majors in teaching reform, student
information management and teacher assessment
and even schools’ internal affairs management, to
realize the modernization transformation of
vocational college education as soon as possible.
3.3 Increasing students’ practice
opportunities based on multimodal
theory
Effective connection between teaching activities and
social positions determines the success of talent
cultivation in vocational colleges as well as the
realization of purpose to serve the economy and
society. “Cooperation of colleges and enterprises,
combination of work and study” is the personnel
training mode proposed by Ministry of Education
recently. It requires vocational colleges to adjust
traditional lecture-based teaching, and emphasizes
the consistency of society requirement and teaching
requirement in college-enterprise cooperation to
guarantee pertinence and effectiveness of students’
learning. The best method to practice multimodal
theory is to increase students’ practice opportunities
by all means. It will provide necessary reference to
students’ future career if they can comprehensively
know about position statement, job specification and
corresponding stimulation treatment of their major-
related jobs.
In Hubei Province, vocational unified
examination will retreat from its historical stage and
be replaced by knowledge & skill assessment. The
attempt to differentiate vocational education and
general education not only further emphasizes the
professionalism of teaching and learning in
vocational colleges, but also is able to realize the
important value of “From the society and to the
society”. With extensive use, vocational English has
rich content including business English, travel
English, scientific English, etc. It requires students
have sufficient ability in aspects of spoken English,
cultural background, reading and translation, daily
writing, etc. These skills can make students high
Cultivation of Vocational Students’ English Practical Ability based on Multimodal Theory
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Cultivation of Vocational Studentsâ
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stadard technical employees who are qualified for
their future positions. And what’s more, good
English practical ability will increase additional
value for these young workplace freshmen,
providing them with more independent choice right.
With negotiation and contracts, vocational colleges
can establish stable and reasonable win-win
cooperation mode with work units such as
enterprises and departments. It is effectively helpful
to open students’ eyes by the organization visits of
specific workflow related to practical English, the
participation in lectures made by foreign specialists
and scholars and even the transportation of
quantitative outstanding internships to foreign
enterprises or famous domestic enterprises. Through
these measures, students will have a further and
comprehensive understanding of actual requirements
in own majors and realize the distance between their
learning effect and job requirements, which can urge
them to lay more emphasis on English competence
and self-improvement.
4 CONCLUSIONS
For the students in our vocational schools, both
schools and teachers should pay more attention to its
professionalism as well as students’ corresponding
practical ability and strain capacity considering
specific actual requirements in subjects of vocational
colleges. Multimodal theory, compared with
traditional teaching theory, has unparalleled
superiority due to its visible and comprehensive
perspective. Meanwhile, it has unique application
value to students’ different senses in teaching
activities as well as various fields related to
teaching. With the support of schools and related
departments, teachers can constantly expand
teaching forms in this mode and integrate diversified
teaching activities into network by information
technology. With these measures and further
college-enterprise cooperation, finally, students’
comprehensive quality including practical ability
will be improved.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was one of periodical achievements of
Hunan provincial level project Cultivation of
Vocational Students’ English Practical Ability Based
on the Input and Output of Multimodal Theory (NO.
XJKO13CZY003) and one of initial outcomes of
Hunan Railway Professional Technology College
school-level course Connection of Public English
course and Professional Education in Higher
Vocational Colleges (No. K201414).
REFERENCES
Liu Shuqi. Preliminary Discussion on Employment-
oriented Vocational English Teaching. The
Merchandise and Quality. 2014 (3): 170-170.
Luo Ying. Application of Multimodal Pattern in
Translation Teaching of Vocational Business English.
Management & Technology of SME. 2014 (1): 277-
277.
Yang Wenge. Several Problems of Vocational English
Course Teaching. Time Education. 2014 (11):238-238.
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