Application Of Mi Theory To Task-Based College English Teaching

Now college English teaching is facing a reform. More emphasis is put on improving students' communicative skills, that is, the language using skills. But students often do not react actively to the communicative activities. It seems some students do not enjoy the class at all. Then how to get students interested in language learning and active in English learning tasks?With theses questions, this thesis just focuses on the tentative analysis of how to apply Multiple Intelligence theory to task-based college English teaching. Task-based language teaching approach has become a very popular approach in contemporary language teaching. However, the present research on task-based approach has been focused on the concept of "task" or the procedures to carry out task-based teaching. Its result is not as effective as teachers have planned. For many Chinese students, they are accustomed to the traditional 3Ps (Present, Practice, Produce) teaching style. To seek help from Multiple Intelligence theory and pay attention to students' different learning styles may contribute to improving college English learning.Multiple Intelligence theory has been the focus on how to improve students' learning ability since its application to teaching. This theory helps teachers pay more attention to students' intelligence strengths and different learning styles. Thus, compared with the traditional teaching methods in colleges in China, task-based teaching approach under the guidance of MI theory will be very useful to enhance students' motivation as well as their achievements in English learning.The thesis has offered a brief literature review of the Multiple Intelligence theory and its application to foreign language teaching. What is task-based language teaching is also illustrated as well as how to apply MI theory to the task-based teaching approach to improve students' language skills.In the thesis, an experimental research is carried out to examine how to put the Multiple Intelligence theory into task-based teaching, aiming to find out whether Mi-inspired teaching activities will help students improve their achievements and how students react to this kind of teaching method.There are two surveys and two tests carried out in the research. One survey is to get a view of students' intelligence, especially their dominant intelligence and their weak intelligence. The other survey is to collect students' opinions on present classroom English teaching, their learning habits as well as their learning motivation and expectation. The two tests are pre-test and post-test to find out whether there is a performance difference after the experimental teaching.In the research, qualitative and quantitative methods are used to analyze the collected data. According to the data received, students can be better motivated with Mi-inspired teaching activities. Students will perform slightly better in written tests compared with students studying in a traditional teaching context. Task-based language teaching activities will be more applicable under the guidance of the Multiple Intelligence theory.However, due to the fact that the research is short-termed and the formal written test is used as a main means to evaluate students" performance, more research needs doing in the future.