A Study Based Upon Multiple Intelligence Theory: Diversified ELT Classroom Activities In China's Junior High Schools

The English Curriculum Standard of China's Full-time Compulsory Education for High School (henceforth "The Standard" ), which was put into exercise in 2001 by the Ministry of Education, places the first aim at cultivating learners' interest and self-confidence, thus forming them appropriate learning habits or strategies and developing autonomous learning skills and their team spirits. This is a big shift of focus from any traditional syllabus designed before, all of which attached great importance to mastering basic language knowledge and skills.This new curriculum innovation has adequately shown that teaching is not only for the all-round development of every student, but also for development of individuality. This has thus reminded me of "the multiple intelligence theory" (MI theory) by Dr. Howard Gardner, a well-known psychologist in Harvard University, since it has much in common with the new curriculum in terms of educational conception. In light of this theory, this thesis attempts to discuss diversified classroom activities in ELT, aiming at cultivation of individuality and development of students' all-round abilities.MI theory considers no man in the world is intelligence-free, instead every person possesses a different intelligence combination which may result in his personal learning style (Gardner, 1983). Teachers have to study those combinations and styles so that students' weak intelligences are also able to be tapped as much as the stronger ones. MI theory also advocates a "collaborated" teacher-student relationship and "open" classroom teaching, encouraging students to go out to learn from the real world in which they live, which is named as "experiencing education" or "situational education".This research sets out to study the relationship between diversified classroom activities and students' all-round development, bearing three specific questions: Whether diversified classroom activities could help develop multiple intelligences in a balanced way? Whether diversified activities could lead to students' positive affective attitude? What is the difference of learning effects between the experimental group and the control group?In order to find out how the new curriculum is carried out, a survey has been conducted among the English teachers at six junior high schools in Xiaogan, Hubei province. Questions range from the designing to implementation of their classroomactivities, in addition to teaching effects. Results well reflect teachers are teaching the new course-book by traditional methods, neglecting the fact that students are independent individuals and creative beings.Next, six natural classes of grade 8 in one school have been selected to do the experiment. Three of them serve as experimental group and the other three as control group. Three teachers have been assigned to the teaching, each taking two classes (one from experimental group, the other from control group). Experiment manipulates classroom activities as independent variable, which means experimental classes are treated with diversified classroom activities while control classes follow their usual ways. The experiment lasts six months, during which teachers will observe students closely and take notes about their response and behavior changes. After the experiment, questionnaires will be delivered within the experiment group, asking about their new experience. Data will be finally collected from the questionnaire, teachers' account and final-term examination analysis, and analyzed both cross-sectionally (between experiment group and control group) and longitudinally (looking for changes over time).Post-experimental questionnaires over students result that diversification of English activities has not only made lessons more interesting but also students more interested, moreover, it has enhanced students' confidence and cooperativeness. The teachers' classroom report says students become more active in participating classroom activities, their speaking and communicative abilities have increased. Results from the final-term examination analysis show experimental group shows a better achievement in such language output tasks as "writing", "making sentences out of pictures" and "linking words into a sentence".To sum up, this research draws the following conclusions: 1) Diversified classroom activities of ELT can awaken students' learning interests, and activate their weak intelligences with the strong ones, leading to a balanced development;2) Diversification of activities can help build vivid classroom atmosphere, enhance students' confidence and sense of cooperation, so as to form them positive affective attitudes. 3) Though diversified activities don't bring immediate benefits in paper examinations, students are actually put to "learn in doing", hence their sense of language has been enhanced and their speaking and writing abilities adequately improved.However, diversification of classroom activities also has limitations. Under the current assessment system, "heroes are only created out of examinations", anything thatdoes not show immediate favorable effects in examinations will not be popular. What's more, diversification of classroom activities still faces challenges from the oversize of class and poor-qualified teachers.