Research on the Interactive Mode of College English Teaching in Multimedia Environment
Published Online: Mar 19, 2025
Received: Nov 04, 2024
Accepted: Feb 11, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/amns-2025-0404
Keywords
© 2025 Junling Wang, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Multimedia refers to the media system formed by combining two or more media in order to teach and transmit information [1–2]. The fourth educational revolution marked by educational technology has led to important changes in the way of education, and the use of multimedia techniques and tools in classroom teaching has long made some remarkable achievements after more than two decades of intensive practice and development, with the speed and scope of educational dissemination expanding continuously [3–4]. However, with the continuous development of as many as 467 public colleges and universities in China in the past decade, in order to meet the multi-level and diversified educational needs of students in public colleges and universities, especially to promote the reform of college English classroom teaching in public colleges and universities, English teachers need to combine the characteristics of students in public colleges and universities. To study how multimedia classroom teaching methods can further play a huge role in breaking the traditional English education model [5–8].
One of the teaching modes that is loved and welcomed by the majority of teachers and students in the environment of the wide application of multimedia is interactive teaching [9–10]. It can effectively narrow the distance between teachers and students, making the originally tense and serious classroom teaching become more relaxed and enjoyable [11–12]. In this kind of teaching atmosphere, teachers can teach the knowledge content better, and students can naturally accept the classroom teaching content better [13–14]. Under the interactive teaching theory of college English classroom teaching, students are independent and conscious learners, the main body of teaching activities, as well as participants in the teaching of English knowledge as well as recipients, but also the sharer of information resources; the teacher has changed from the original dominant to the supervisor of the teaching of English knowledge and the facilitator in the process of teaching, and is the guide and helper of the students [15–18].
This paper focuses on the context theory and the internal mechanism of multimedia learning of the interactive teaching mode of college English under the environment of multimedia technology, deeply analyzes the interactive mode of college English, and designs the multimedia interactive teaching for the course of Business English. In order to fully demonstrate the multimedia interactive teaching mode and implement the multimedia interactive teaching mode in the classroom of Business English majors, relevant data were collected through the questionnaire survey method to understand the satisfaction and interaction of teachers and students with the multimedia interactive English teaching classroom. At the same time, a comparative analysis of the teaching experiment was conducted for two types of classes, i.e., experimental class and control class, aiming to understand the interactive teaching mode and its teaching effect in the multimedia environment.
The theory of audio-visual teaching, centered on the “tower of experience”, was put forward in the “Audio-Visual Pedagogy” of 1946. According to this theory, it is easier for people to acquire knowledge through direct to indirect means, as well as from concrete to abstract. He used a triangular pagoda diagram of learning experience to represent the learning effect of different learning styles, “the tower of experience” as shown in Figure 1, the “tower of experience” is divided into three major categories with ten parallel levels: language symbols and target symbols are abstract experiences, the effect of learning up to achieve is the worst. Language symbols and target symbols are abstract experiences, which are the least effective for learning. Observation experiences, which can be acquired by watching pictures and movies, rank in the middle of the list. But the experience of doing, i.e., self-knowledge and summarization acquired through practice, has the best learning effect. The experiences at the bottom of this pagoda are the most detailed and concrete, and as one moves up, the ways of acquiring them become more abstract. Education and teaching should begin with concrete experiences and progress to abstraction. The path to effective learning should be filled with concrete experiences. In schools, the use of various instructional media can make learning more concrete, resulting in better understanding. Audio-visual media, which are located in the middle of the tower, can provide more concrete and easy-to-understand experiences than verbal and visual symbols, and can break through the limitations of time and space to make up for the shortcomings of other direct experiences. “Tower of experience” theory of the relationship between the degree of abstraction of experience, is in line with the law of understanding from concrete to abstract, from sensibility to rationality, from individual to general, it is not only the psychological basis of audio-visual education, but also the modern educational technology - multimedia teaching. It is not only the psychological foundation of audiovisual education, but also one of the important theoretical foundations of modern educational technology - multimedia teaching.
Dell’s experience tower
Meyer sees two main types of learning purposes - literacy and comprehension. Literacy is the ability to reproduce or recognize presented material, which is measured by retention tests. Comprehension is the ability of learners to form a coherent mental representation of the presented material, which reflects their ability to use the material in new situations and can be measured by transfer tests. The purpose of multimedia learning is not to overload the learner with information, but to enhance their comprehension of the presented material.
Based on the synthesis of cognitive psychology research and the definition of multimedia, Meyer has made a depiction of the internal mechanism of multimedia learning for students as shown in Figure 2. To utilize multimedia technology to facilitate student learning, it is necessary to understand the internal process of student learning, especially the process of student learning from multimedia.
Internal mechanism
The use of multimedia for learning is based on the idea that instructional information should be designed according to the way the human brain works. According to Meyer, humans have two basic information processing systems: one for processing verbal material and one for processing visual material. Learning with multimedia takes full advantage of the resources available to humans for processing information. Change of teaching ideology: change the emphasis on “teaching” to “learning”, firmly establish the idea of “students’ development as the development of the whole person”, and design and carry out all teaching activities with the overall development of the five major literacies of students’ language skills, affective attitudes, learning strategies and cultural awareness as the starting and ending point. All teaching activities should be designed and carried out with the overall development of students’ language skills, language knowledge, affective attitudes, learning strategies, and cultural awareness as the starting and ending point. The audio-visual elements of multimedia are suitable for various learning styles, making it a content-rich and practical learning environment, which is more conducive to stimulating students’ motivation to learn and their sense of participation. At the same time, it also provides an opportunity for teachers to update their teaching concepts and reassess their roles in teaching. Thus, multimedia teaching, while emphasizing students as the main body of teaching, also puts forward requirements for the improvement of teachers’ quality and multi-skills, thus fundamentally changing the concept of teaching and improving the quality of teaching. Transformation of the teaching process: The teaching process has been transformed from the traditional logical analysis or comprehensive explanation to the teaching process of teacher-student interaction under the guidance of the theory of meaning construction, i.e., through the use of teaching resources, teaching scenarios are established for students, so that they can learn through consultation and discussion with the teacher and their classmates, participate in exercises, and transform their knowledge into their English communicative competence. The effectiveness of learning mainly depends on the degree of students’ participation, and the degree of participation depends to a certain extent on the teacher’s motivation and encouragement. Transformation of the role of the media: the media is transformed from a tool for the teacher’s explanation to a cognitive tool for the students. Constructivism emphasizes the use of a variety of information resources to support “learning” rather than support “teaching”. Teachers can guide students to self-study or collaborative learning by developing multimedia courseware libraries and improving the course resource library. Communication between teachers and students in the classroom. Traditional English teaching belongs to the “human - human” teaching mode. This teaching mode strengthens the two-way interaction between teachers and students, shortens the distance between teachers and students, and promotes emotional communication. Traditional English classroom teaching allows teachers to maximize their subjective initiative. Teachers infect students with experience, love, and personal charisma to arouse their desire for knowledge and help them set up the correct motivation for learning. Teachers can get in touch with students in and out of class, go to the middle of the students (unlike multimedia teaching where teachers are bound to the podium), learn about the students’ problems in time, and provide targeted guidance.
For the Business English course that requires an interactive teaching mode, the main steps commonly used with the assistance of traditional educational technology are as follows:
Review. Students are led to review the knowledge and language points taught in the previous lesson mainly through questioning or dictation. Introduction of the new lesson. After the emergence of multimedia-assisted teaching, most teachers will set up some oral questions or scene descriptions, show pictures with PPT or play some movie clips to guide students in the introduction, but due to the characteristics of Business English, that is, more than ten years of campus life makes students lack of background, and it is difficult to realize the effect that all the students are inspired quickly despite the teacher’s full guidance. However, due to the lack of background of students in business English, it is difficult for all the students to be inspired quickly despite the teacher’s full guidance, so in the introduction stage of the new lesson, some students are often confused or lose interest. Learning the key knowledge. This part is the basic knowledge of a unit and is also the key point. Of course, the relatively weak foundation of higher vocational students makes it difficult. A large number of vocabulary and terminology on the textbook, it is difficult to show rich illustrative pictures on the PPT, the recorder plays a large section of fast and difficult listening materials, and after learning, we have to carry out group dialog practice, which mainly focuses on reading out dialog in roles, reciting and performing dialog, and imitating and creating classic dialogs.
The main function of multimedia courseware is to provide teaching information, and the goal of the design is to reflect the advanced education theory and teaching content, and to give full play to the function of computer-aided teaching. As the courseware is designed to realize the teaching, so the design of the courseware has its own certain special requirements. So this courseware in the production of teaching content selection and scripting can be described as painstaking. We refer to the authoritative business English teaching materials available on the market and used by various universities. After selecting the teaching content and arranging the design of teaching links, the framework of the courseware and the division of functional modules should also be completed. The framework of the courseware and the small modules under each module are shown in Figure 3. The teaching courseware is designed in such a way that the modules are independent of each other, and the functions of each module and the jumps between modules are realized through menus, buttons, and hot buttons.
Courseware frame
This study is a validation study of the effectiveness of the application of interactive teaching in university English classrooms, with the main purpose of testing whether it can really play a role in improving students’ interest in English learning and academic performance in actual teaching. The first and second classes of the first year of Medical English major at Ningxia Medical University, each with 40 students, were selected.
Class 1 is a comparative class that is taught using traditional methods. Class 2 is an experimental class with an interactive teaching mode. In this paper, through the investigation and research of the test material, and traditional teaching as a comparison to recognize the obvious advantages of interactive teaching mode, for classroom teaching reform and innovation to provide empirical evidence. The evaluation of the two classes on the measurement of teaching effectiveness scale pretest, as shown in Table 1, shows that there was basically no significant difference between the experimental and control classes’ pre-test scores.
Classroom effect
| Cross-reference class | Laboratory class | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Very good | Better | General | Difference | Very good | Better | General | Difference | |
| Study interest | 8 | 9 | 12 | 11 | 8 | 9 | 11 | 12 |
| Learning efficiency | 7 | 7 | 13 | 13 | 8 | 7 | 12 | 13 |
| Combined effect | 9 | 8 | 16 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 16 | 10 |
| Inspirational thinking | 8 | 6 | 12 | 14 | 7 | 6 | 11 | 16 |
| Oral expression | 5 | 6 | 15 | 14 | 6 | 7 | 16 | 11 |
| Master key | 10 | 9 | 11 | 10 | 9 | 10 | 12 | 9 |
| Written expression | 5 | 6 | 15 | 14 | 5 | 6 | 16 | 13 |
| Improve hearing | 6 | 3 | 15 | 16 | 5 | 4 | 16 | 15 |
| Focus | 8 | 7 | 11 | 14 | 7 | 7 | 10 | 16 |
After the experimental class completed the experimental content, a second survey was conducted on the two classes, and the results of the post-test are shown in Figure 4. The difference between the presurvey data and post-survey data of the control class is not big, while the difference between the two sets of data of the experimental class is more obvious, and the classroom effect has obviously been greatly improved, and the frequency of “better” in each dimension is more than 10. Although the classroom effect of the experimental class has not yet reached the ideal state of full satisfaction, from the data, the majority of students have already expressed satisfaction with the teacher’s teaching style, and the interactive teaching mode has been recognized by the students. Although the classroom effect of the experimental class has not yet reached the ideal state of full satisfaction, from the data, most students have expressed their satisfaction with the teacher’s teaching method, and the interactive teaching mode has been recognized by students.
English learning interest test list
Through the two classes of the university according to different ways of teaching, after the questionnaire survey and statistical analysis of the data, it can be learned that before the experiment,the first class and the second class of the English interest survey statistics as shown in Table 2: the data can be seen, before the experiment, the experimental class and the control class of the students in the “degree of liking of English”, “English classroom atmosphere”, “the form of teaching English” three issues are relatively close to the views of the two classes of English interest and English level is comparable. The data shows that before the experiment, the opinions of the students in the experimental class and the control class on the three issues of “liking of English”, “the atmosphere of the English class” and “the form of teaching in the English class” were relatively similar, and the English interest and English level of the students in the two classes were comparable. However, after the six-week experiment, the experimental class showed a significant increase in students’ liking of English, a significant increase in their satisfaction with the atmosphere of the English classroom, and a significant increase in the number of students who found the teaching style of the English class interesting from the initial 25% to 30%, whereas there was basically no change in the data of the control class. Therefore, it can be concluded that the use of interactive teaching mode can stimulate students’ interest and enthusiasm in learning English.
English learning interest test list
| Survey problem | Options | Cross-reference class | Laboratory class | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pretest | Posttest | Pretest | Posttest | ||
| How much do you like English lessons | Very like | 11 | 10 | 11 | 16 |
| Like | 9 | 10 | 10 | 15 | |
| General | 10 | 11 | 12 | 8 | |
| Dislike | 10 | 9 | 7 | 1 | |
| What do you think of the English classroom atmosphere | Very good | 9 | 10 | 10 | 12 |
| Good | 8 | 9 | 9 | 12 | |
| General | 14 | 11 | 13 | 10 | |
| Bad | 9 | 10 | 8 | 6 | |
| What do you think of the English teaching form | Rich | 10 | 11 | 10 | 15 |
| Enrichment | 10 | 7 | 11 | 14 | |
| General | 13 | 12 | 12 | 8 | |
| Vapour | 7 | 10 | 7 | 3 | |
In this section, a survey was also conducted on students’ confidence in learning English to find out whether the interactive teaching model is useful in enhancing students’ confidence in learning English. The survey data are shown in Table 3: As the data show, it is not difficult to find that there is no significant change in the data of the control class, but there is a very significant change in the information of English learning of the students in the experimental class. Before the experiment, only 14 students thought that they were not afraid of speaking English. 16 students were confident in answering questions in class, and 9 students thought that their pronunciation was very standard. After the experiment, 18 students thought they were not afraid to speak English, 19 students were confident in answering English questions in class, and 14 students thought their pronunciation was standard. As we all know, an important criterion to measure the level of students’ English proficiency is selfconfidence. Daring to speak and use English is the prerequisite and foundation for speaking and using English well, if you don’t dare to speak and use English, naturally your English ability will be on the low side, and your English performance will be unsatisfactory. Therefore, after experimentation, it has been found that adopting an interactive teaching method can improve students’ self-confidence in learning English.
Students’ English learning confidence survey results
| Survey problem | Options | Control class | Experiment class | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pretest | Posttest | Pretest | Posttest | ||
| Are you afraid to speak English | Be not afraid | 10 | 11 | 14 | 18 |
| General | 16 | 16 | 11 | 14 | |
| Be afraid of | 14 | 13 | 15 | 8 | |
| You answer questions in English in class | Be confident | 10 | 10 | 16 | 19 |
| General | 15 | 15 | 13 | 10 | |
| Shy | 15 | 15 | 11 | 11 | |
| You feel your English pronunciation | Very standard | 8 | 9 | 9 | 14 |
| Standard | 11 | 10 | 12 | 13 | |
| General | 13 | 14 | 14 | 7 | |
| Nonstandard | 8 | 7 | 5 | 6 | |
The statistical results of the students’ total English scores are shown in Figure 5. Before the experiment, the average value of the control class’s word sound score was 28.98. The experimental class was 28.84. The data was small, and the two classes did not have a significant difference in their associations of word sounds with the words themselves. In contrast, the control class had a standard deviation of 1.052. The experimental class is 1.112. The experimental class was slightly higher than the control class, which suggests a greater degree of dispersion in the performance of the students in the experimental class, and a slightly wider gap between the students in the same class in terms of their scores on the word-sound test.
The results of the students’ test results are counted
In the middle of the experiment, after the experimental class used multimedia interactive teaching, the average value of the word sound scores of the control class was 31.895, and that of the experimental class was 32.32. Although there was not much difference in the data, comparing with the data of the pre-test, the scores of the experimental class and the control class in the word sound showed some progress, which indicated that the new teaching method was not completely able to fit the development of the students at the early stage of the experiment. The standard deviation of the control class was 0.78, while that of the experimental class was 0.94. The decrease in standard deviation indicates that the experimental class scored more evenly on word sounds in the second vocabulary test, and the degree of dispersion decreased. This shows that teaching vocabulary on the Silver Whiteboard can stimulate the learning interest of some of the students who scored poorly.
In the post-experiment test, as shown by the data, the mean value of the word sound scores of the control class was 44.95, and that of the experimental class was 48.85. The score of the control class was lower than that of the experimental class, and the experimental class made a significant progress than the control class, and to a certain extent, the experimental class made a certain progress in the linkage between the vocabulary itself and the pronunciation of the words after the multimedia interactive instruction. And the standard deviation of the experimental class is 0.52, comparing with 1.112 before the experiment and 0.94 in the middle of the experiment, the standard deviation is decreasing gradually, which indicates that the experimental class tends to score evenly in word pronunciation in the three vocabulary tests, the degree of dispersion is getting smaller and smaller, and the scoring gap between the students is also narrowing.
This part will describe, analyze, and discuss the results of a questionnaire survey on classroom teacher-student interaction in multimedia assisted English teaching. Freshman and sophomore students of the Medical English major at Ningxia Medical University were selected as the research subjects. The results of the survey are analyzed in Figure 6, which shows that the majority of the students highly agree with the use of multimedia-assisted English teaching, and 81%, 70%, and 87% of the surveyed students in the three grades respectively agree that multimedia-assisted English teaching can make students actively participate in classroom teaching activities. This shows that using multimedia in an English classroom can encourage students to actively participate in classroom teaching activities. Normally, teachers use traditional teaching methods in English teaching, which are boring and do not stimulate students’ interest in learning. But due to the use of multimedia-assisted teaching, this phenomenon has been greatly changed. Music, bright colors, beautiful pictures, and interesting three-dimensional animation can attract their attention. Computer storage capacity and fast computing speed can improve text, images, animations, sounds, and other information. This information is vivid, graphic, intuitive, infectious, and can arouse students’ strong curiosity and desire for knowledge, so that students have a strong interest in the content of what they are learning, so that they can actively participate in the classroom teaching activities.
Survey results and analysis
Regarding the most suitable form of classroom teaching for multimedia-assisted university English teaching, students indicated that “multimedia screen presentation supplemented by teacher’s explanation” was the most suitable, with 27%, 31% and 41% respectively.
The most suitable form of classroom teaching was “group discussion and other interactive communication activities”, with 55%, 45% and 48% in the three grades respectively. “Teacher-directed student presentations” were the most appropriate at 18, 24 and 11 percent, respectively. This feedback shows that students rejected the teacher’s one-word and full-teaching methods, which also indicates that multimedia-assisted English teaching provides students with more opportunities for verbal expression, and the teacher’s explanations are now in a secondary position. Compared to traditional classroom teaching, multimedia-assisted teaching saves a lot of time on the board. If all of this time is used to explain, easy to cause students classroom fatigue, disorganized, so we must pay attention to the diversification of the form of teaching. For example, after explaining a central theme, you can put forward some relevant questions, so that students to discuss the answer, or some classroom exercises, so that students hands on the brain or let the students ask questions, the teacher to answer. In short, the classroom should try to make students rotate activities such as listening, watching, thinking, speaking, writing, and other actions.
This paper firstly elaborates Meyer’s multimedia learning theory and audio-visual context theory as a guide, systematically researches the interactive teaching mode of college English in multimedia environment, and designs the teaching of medical English course. Combined with teaching practice, it explores the effects of multimedia English interactive teaching, emotional attitudes, and interactions. The experiment shows that there is a significant gap between the pre- and post-test data of multimedia English interactive teaching, and the classroom effect has improved. The number of students who thought the teaching method was interesting also increased from 25% to 30% before the course began. Multimedia interactive teaching can enhance students’ self-confidence and lead to increased scores in the area of word sound. Most of the students thought that the most suitable form of classroom teaching was a multimedia screen presentation as the main focus, supplemented by teacher’s explanation.
To sum up, when students learn medical English, they should interact with others for language communication, and the theoretical knowledge learned in class should also be put into practice, so as to better exert the subject value of medical English through the comprehensive skills training of listening, speaking, reading and writing. In medical English learning, teachers can stimulate students’ interest in learning and make them participate in classroom exploration independently and spontaneously, which has positive significance for the improvement of students’ comprehensive English quality. By building an interactive environment in the classroom, students can actively communicate with teachers and better master the practical use of medical English in a realistic interactive communication environment.