An Empirical Study On English Vocabulary Teaching Based On The Multiple Intelligences Theory In Junior Middle Schools

Vocabulary teaching has always been an important part of English teaching in junior high school.English listening,speaking,reading and writing skills are inseparable from vocabulary learning.Although vocabulary has been highly valued in teaching,many teachers report that the vocabulary teaching effect is not good in actual teaching.In addition to the lack of vocabulary,many students can’t use words well in listening,speaking,reading,writing,and reading,so they lose interest in English learning.It is necessary for teachers to constantly explore and use new theories to guide junior middle school English vocabulary teaching in ordinary English teaching.In 1983,Howard Gardner,an American psychologist,put forward the theory of multiple intelligences,and it has gradually been widely used in English teaching in China.However,there are not many studies on the combination of multiple intelligence theory and vocabulary teaching in junior high schools.This thesis aims to study the application of MIT in junior middle school English vocabulary teaching.Empirical research was conducted on this approach,focusing on the investigation of its effects on the learning of junior English vocabulary.Based on the theory of multiple intelligences and the current study tries to answer the following two questions:1)What are the effects of MIT-based English vocabulary teaching on students’ interest in vocabulary learning ?2)What are the effects of MIT-based English vocabulary teaching on students’ performance in vocabulary learning?The author designed and conducted a four-month experiments in two classes from Grade 8 in a certain middle school in Changsha,Hunan,which lasted a whole semester.One is the experimental group(39 students),and the other is the control group(40 students).In the experimental class,the teacher designed teaching method based on MIT,and students learn the vocabulary by doing a variety of activities which accommodated their different intelligences;and in the control class,the traditional teaching methods,such as reading,translation and explanation of the lexical meaning and vocabulary drills,are still applied in the vocabulary teaching.The data was collected by comprehensively using various research tools such as front and rear questionnaire surveys,classroom observations,interviews,and front and back test papers,and the obtained data was analyzed using SPSS(22.0).The result of the research reveals that there are evident distinctions between the MIT based English vocabulary teaching approach and the traditional English vocabulary teaching approach.The study shows that the students in the experimental class showed more interest in English vocabulary learning and got higher grades in the post test than the students in the controlled class.Due to the restrictions of time and place,the study has two main limitations in terms of the experimental duration time and the sample size.The experiment only lasted 4 months,and only 79 subjects took part in the experiment so that the results of the study might be cautious to make generalization.For more precise results,further empirical studies should last a longer period of time and cover a larger sample size.The author believes that the research will provide a new approach to English vocabulary teaching for junior high school English teachers.