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Multimodal Analysis of Image-Text Relations in the PEP Senior High English Textbooks

Author(s)

Jia Xu*

Affiliation(s)

School of Foreign Languages, Liaocheng University, Liaocheng, Shandong, China *Corresponding Author

Abstract

With the rise of multimodal teaching concepts, visual resources in English textbooks have become important teaching media. Illustrations are not only visual representations of textual content but also essential components of multimodal teaching resources. However, the phenomenon of "emphasizing text while neglecting images" remains prevalent in current senior high school English teaching, and the multimodal teaching potential of illustrations has yet to be fully exploited. Based on Martinee & Salway's image-text relation theory, this study conducts quantitative statistics and qualitative analysis of the image-text relationships in the People's Education Press (PEP) Senior High School English compulsory textbooks. The findings reveal that the proportion of co-occurring images and text is relatively high in the textbooks, with 74.1% demonstrating equal status between image and text, and 25.9% showing unequal status. Therefore, teachers should fully recognize the pedagogical value of illustrations, design teaching strategies according to different image-text relationship characteristics, and fully tap into the teaching potential of multimodal resources to promote the comprehensive development of students' language abilities and thinking qualities.

Keywords

Multimodal Analysis; Image-Text Relations; PEP Senior High English Textbooks; Textbook Illustrations; Multimodal Teaching

References

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