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In this age of multimedia, there is an increasing awareness that meaning is rarelymade with language alone. Halliday (1994) theorized language as social semiotics and 0,Tool (1994) extends it to the realm of displayed art, such as painting, architecture andsculpture, providing that not only language but also these non-linguistic semiotic modescan be regarded as meaning potential. Kress and van Leeuween (1996, 2006) developed amethod of social semiotic analysis of visual communication and firstly create a descriptiveframework of multimodality, assigning representational, interpersonal and compositionalmeanings.Multimodality is the use of several semiotic modes and their combination within asocial-cultural domain which results in a semiotic product or event (Kress and vanLeeuwen, 2001). According to Hodge and Kress (1988), meaning consists in vision,hearing, actions, expressions and also other social semiotics, which are no longer regardedas subordination to language, but as meaning-making resources functioning together withlanguage. It is far from enough to focus only on language since no single semiotic can beunderstood alone. Therefore, Multimodal Discourse Analysis becomes popular.College Entrance Examination might be a significant test in one's life, of whichwriting plays a vital role. It takes up 20% of the total grade. It is noticed that in recentyears, picture compositions appear more and more frequently in all kinds of Englishexaminations in order to check students' English ability.In the part of picture composition, one is required to form a verbal text according tothe given images which might be a story or just an illustration. Since it is always difficultfor students to catch the evocable realistic notions, the picture composition is surelyworthy of a deep study from a variety of perspectives. There might firstly be somedirections for a student to lead him into rules of composing," and then some pictures aregiven. In this case, it is multimodal in that at least two kinds of semiotic resources areco-employed to make meaning.

1.2 Rationale for the Present Research

Systemic Functional Linguistics has placed great importance on the analysis ofdiscourse which is monomodal. Systemists consider language as the only mode in makingmeaning, neglecting the contribution of other modes, such as space, vision, sound,movement and others, to the discourse as a meaningful unity.Although multimodality has been receiving more and more attention, yet previousstudies on multimodality focused mainly on the explanation of grammar in differentnon-linguistic modes. The suggestion, provided by Hu Zhuanglin (2007) that the ability ofreading multimodality (multiliteracies) should be cultivated, is ignored.This thesis conducts a comprehensive analysis of picture composition on the basis ofmultimodal discourse analysis. Writing is of great significance to test students' languageability, and also takes up a high proportion in College Entrance Examination. Picturecomposition, a typical multimodal discourse appearing frequently in English examinations,has been neglected by scholars.The main purpose of the thesis is to provide strategies to cultivate multiliteracies onthe basis of analyzing picture compositions, both the images and the verbal texts inEnglish exams within the framework of multimodal discourse analysis. Spec本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。