An Empirical Study On Transformation Of The Rural Junior School Students With English Learning Difficulties Under The Guidance Of The Multiple Intelligence Theory

With the further advance of curriculum reform in China,English teaching is facing new challenges,especially the junior middle school English teaching in rural.Students have lots of difficulties in learning English,and there are a number of students with English learning difficulties(ELD).How to help these students with ELD in rural junior middle school get out of trouble,and to improve their English performance is a concern of every rural middle school teacher,and is also an urgent and important task of our country’s current education.And at the same time,according to the requirements of English Curriculum Standard(2011 edition),the teaching and the learning methods in rural junior middle schools must be changed by enhancing the quality of rural junior middle school teachers and raising the efficiency of the classroom teaching,helping students in rural junior middle schools learn independently and improve their English learning ability.The author would like to research three questions:1)what effects does the application of the theory of Multiple Intelligence in the English teaching of rural junior middle schools have on the learning interests of the junior middle school students with ELD?2)what effects does the application of the theory of Multiple Intelligence in the English teaching of rural junior middle schools have on the development of the students’good learning habits?3)what changes will the students’ academic performances undergo with the help of the theory of Multiple Intelligence?Based on the background mentioned above,this paper carries out a practical exploration of applying the theory of multiple intelligence to English teaching in rural middle schools for the transformation of rural junior middle school students with ELD.This study began in March 2018 and ended in July 2018,and it was conducted in a junior middle school in Hainan Wanning on the basis of the previous related researches on students with ELD both at home and abroad under the guidance of the theory of Multiple Intelligences put forward by Dr Howard Gardner,an educational psychologist from Harvard University in the United States.Instruments like questionnaires,interviews,classroom observations and tests were applied to collect data to be used to discuss the transformation effects of the appropriate use of the theory of Multiple Intelligence in rural junior middle school English teaching on learning interest,learning habits and academic performance of students with ELD.The results of the study show that teachers can better understand the intelligent distribution of students with learning difficulties by introducing the theory of Multiple Intelligence in rural junior middle school English teaching,especially the discovery of superior intelligence.English teachers have to use all kinds of methods to mobilize the superior intelligence of students with learning difficulties.It is helpful to enhance students’ confidence of learning English and increase their interest of English learning through giving full play to the superior intelligence of students with learning difficulties in English,and it is good for them to develop good learning habits,so as to cultivate their independent leaning ability,and to explore their strengths in some aspects of English.It is not possible to adopt a unified transfromation strategy in the transformation process,because each student with learning difficulties has different superior intelligence.But it should be used to make a good use of students’ superior intelligence to teach students according to their aptitude.Through data analysis,the major findings are concluded as follows:(1)The students with ELD like to learn English by making full of their superior intelligences,and their interest in learning has significantly increased.(2)Most students can gradually develop good learning habits under the guidance of Multiple Intelligence Theory.(3)There is a corresponding promotion in the academic performance of all the students surveyed.The results of the study show that the application of Multiple Intelligence Theory in rural middle school English teaching can effectively transform students with learning difficulties and improve their academic performance.However,due to the limitation of the author’s own theoretical level and some objective factors,it is inevitable that the experiment has some limitations.Therefore,further research on the transformation of rural junior middle school student with English learning difficulties by combining the theory of multiple intelligence needs to be continued.