Abstract: After entering the 21 st century, people's communication style and meaning expression present distinct characteristics of multimodality. As an international language and communication tool, English displays its increasingly significant role. In all fields, academic English writing is one important means of communication, but at the same time it is also a relatively weak link for most Chinese English learners. In terms of foreign language teaching, this paper discusses how, based on the theoretical framework of multimodal discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics, to choose the most effective modality and media in teaching practice so as to optimize the balance of multimodal English academic writing class, to stimulate students' interest in writing, to broaden their imagination of writing thoughts, and to improve learners' English writing proficiency and learning ability.