Research On Mi-based Activities In Senior English Teaching

New curriculum reform focuses on quality-oriented education for all students. Because of the pressure of college entrance examination, the present teaching methods in senior high school ignore the students'creativity and personality, which lead to the inefficient English teaching. Therefore, the individualized education is imminent. In order to create authentic language situations, stimulate students'interest in English and meet the needs of students as much as possible, the author starts thinking about how to design various activities for teaching and learning. MI theory told that everyone has eight kinds of independent intelligences relatively, and the intelligences can be developed with appropriate instruction. MI theory supplies a theoretical basis for the individualized education.Based on studies of MI theory at home and abroad, the author sets out to make a research on MI-based activities in senior English teaching. There are three specific questions designed by the writer in the study, and they are as following:(1) Can MI-based activities motivate students to learn English?(2) Can MI-based activities improve students'English proficiency?(3)Can activities based on different intelligences have similar effect on English learning?This thesis is an empirical study. The subjects are 100 freshmen of two parallel classes from Xinli Senior High School in Linfen. The MI-based activities are applied to the experimental class A, while the traditional teaching methods are still carried out on the control class B. They have attended the experiment for one semester. At first the author makes a survey to investigate the students'intelligence types. The questionnaire is self-designed with the reference of Armstrong's multiple intelligences inventory. After the experiment, the author collects the results of final examination of the two classes. Besides, the writer makes another survey on the effectiveness of MI-based activities in the experimental class. The author applies the Independent Samples and One-Way ANOVA of SPSS (11.5) to analyze the data. Through data analysis and discussion, as well as the classroom observation conducted in the experimental class, the author gets the findings of this research as following:(1) MI-based activities have stimulated students'interest in English, and cultivate students'independent and cooperative learning abilities.(2) MI-based activities have improved the students'English proficiency obviously.(3) In the study, the activities designed for verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, intrapersonal, and interpersonal intelligences have significant effects on improving the English proficiency. However, the activities based on the bodily-kinesthetic and musical intelligences can create the environment for English leaning and increase the learning interest, but have no significant effect on improving the English proficiency.The results show that Multiple Intelligences theory plays a positive role in senior English teaching. This study is far from perfect, for example, the subjects are from two classes of one senior high school and the number is limited. Besides, the activities designed for bodily-kinesthetic and musical intelligences are not satisfactory. However, this study presents a number of MI-based activities and experimental data, which may provide a reference for further research.