探討英語教師編寫線上教材的設計方式與構想：解析圖像與文字之間的關係

The advancement of information communication and technology has dramatically changed the ways people create meaning and interact with each other. They used to rely on text-based communication; now they can make meaning through multimedia such as audios, photos, videos, and graphic icons. Certainly, multimedia contributes to multimodal representation and communication. English teachers are encouraged to incorporate multimodal resources into their teaching; however, little is known about how they represent linguistic knowledge through multimodal composing. To address this problem, the present study trained pre-service English teachers to create online instructional materials in which images can be combined with words to represent vocabulary knowledge. The purposes of this study are to understand how teachers orchestrated visual images and verbal words as well as how teachers as a designer articulated their thinking of visual design. Based on Kress’ (2003) concept of design as situated social sign-making processes, this study proposes two research questions as follows: 1. How did pre-service English teachers mediate visual-verbal relations in composing online instructional materials? 2. How did they develop their design thinking about visual-verbal compositions? This study is situated in the context where six pre-service teachers were recruited to teach 15 junior high school students who needed remedial instructions via web-conferencing technology. The online teachers were engaged in a one-semester distance teaching project, in which they were trained to develop visual literacy, create image-based instructional materials through PowerPoint, teach junior high school students at a distance, and review the use of the online materials in post-teaching discussion sessions. Based on Vungthong et al.’s (2015) framework of analyzing visual-verbal relations, data analysis focused on ideational relations. The number of image-word combinations in each category of ideational relations was calculated and converted into percentage to reveal visual-verbal relations. On the other hand, the participants’ design thinking was articulated and recorded through think-aloud protocol and follow-up individual interviews. Adopting constant comparative method, the researcher sought to identify patterns and themes that emerged from audio-recorded transcriptions. The findings suggest that when the distance teachers composed visual-verbal materials, they tended to use images to “expand” vocabulary meanings rather than “project” them. In terms of visual-verbal expansion, they particularly preferred to use images to elaborate on vocabulary meanings, rather than complementing them. These results reflect those of Vungthong et al. (2015) who also found that visual images were utilized to often elaborate on verbal texts in English learning materials. Such visual-verbal composition were thought to be easily comprehensible to low achievers. With regard to their design thinking, when the distance teachers created visual-verbal vocabulary materials, they would consider students’ learning in relation to increasing their interest, engaging them in interactions, and developing their understanding of the world. These findings may reflect their concerns about motivating low achievers, reducing their distractions at a distance, and improving their world views. This study has provided a deeper insight into how EFL teachers created vocabulary teaching materials in terms of visual-verbal composition. Taken together, the findings suggest a role for visual images in promoting multimodal pedagogy.