Opening all your senses : an exploration of the multimodal approach to engage students' learning of Chinese as a foreign language

This study explores how to use multimodal approaches to engage students in learning Chinese as a foreign language in Australian schools. It includes exploration of different modes that can be utilised in class, the ways that various modes can be integrated to engage students, and the connection between the suitability of modes and teaching content. To find the answers to the research questions, a two-cycle action research was designed. Data is collected mainly from documents, observations, reflective journals, questionnaires, and focus group interviews. It was then analysed through a qualitative method, and three data-driven themes are presented: the picture-based multimodal approach, the gesture-based multimodal approach, and the touch-based multimodal approach. The multimodal approach shows its strength in engaging students by stimulating students’ senses with various modes and forming a relaxing–competitive learning environment in class. It is also found that supplementary methods “度” du, teaching strategies, etc.) are needed to maximise the effects of the multimodal approach. This research provides several evidence-driven practical multimodal methods for other teachers of Chinese to draw upon to engage their students in teaching Chinese as a foreign language classes

The regularity of the solutions to the Muskat equation: the degenerate regularity near the turnover points

In this paper, we prove that if a solution to the Muskat problem with different densities and the same viscosity is sufficiently smooth, the solution is analytic in a region that degenerates at the turnover points, provided some additional conditions are satisfied. This paper studies the analyticity of the solution near turnover points, complementing the result in $[$Jia Shi. Regularity of solutions to the Muskat equation, Arch Rational Mech Anal 247, 36 (2023)$]$