The Effects Of MI Theory-based Learning Strategies On Vocational College Students’ CET4Vocabulary Learning

In1983, the book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences whichwas written by Howard Gardner, an American psychologist, marked the emergence ofthe theory of multiple intelligences. On the basis of MI theory, all experimentalsubjects were divided into two groups—experimental class and control class, with thepurpose of students’ being trained through distinguished teaching strategies. In theresearch, the following research methods were adopted: literature review,questionnaire investigation, after-class interview, and experiment in two classes. Inaddition to these methods, another method used in the research was two vocabularytests—pretest and posttest. All these methods were applied in an attempt to verifypositive influences of MI theory-based vocabulary learning strategies on students’vocabulary development in CET4, and to prove the significant differences in thevocabulary pretest and posttest of the students in experimental class. The researchaimed to make students clearly know their intellectual strengths, mastering andflexibly using MI theory-based learning strategies in vocabulary process. What’s more,awareness of their intellectual strengths and sheer mastering of corresponding learningstrategies should attribute to CET4vocabulary advancement, increasing students’motivation and efficiency.The fundamental purpose of the research lied in exploring the effects of MItheory-based learning strategies on students’ CET4vocabulary learning. Thequestionnaire of intelligences (Jim Wingate,1997) served as the testing tool whichdecides those with strong linguistic and interpersonal intelligences.70students withthese two intellectual strengths were selected from280students through this way. Thenthese70students were randomly grouped into two groups, namely the control class andthe experimental class. Even though all students in these two classes received thesame-long time training (8weeks), students in the control class were trained bytraditional learning strategies while students in the experimental class were trained bycombining MI theory-based learning strategies with some traditional strategies. Afterthe training, the software SPSS was applied to do descriptive analysis about the datacollected from the pretest and posttest. With the parameter test having been done, thetwo independent samples received independent sample T-test, and the two relatedsamples received paired sample T-test.What the research statistics collected from the research show was as follows:(1) Before the experiment, virtually all students (96%) had never heard of MI theory.Being unaware of their own intellectual profiles resulted in their not knowing how totake advantage of one’s intellectual strengths in CET4learning;(2) After theexperiment, no one in the experimental class denied the fact that they were aware oftheir intellectual blends, and97.7%among them agreed that adoption of correspondingMI theory-based learning strategies was of great help in vocabulary improvement;(3)No significant differences existed in the results of the pretest between the control classand the experimental class, but the results of the posttest indicated significantdifferences between the two classes;(4) The after-class interview further verified theassumption that the training of MI theory-based learning strategies played a positiverole in learners’ vocabulary enlargement.The research is perceived as an empirical study which attempts to explore theinfluences of MI theory-based learning strategies training on vocational collegestudents’ CET4vocabulary learning. It is expected that the results gained from thisstudy can provide some helpful guidelines for teachers and researchers who show greatinterest in vocabulary teaching in foreign language teaching, and can shed some lighton the development of college English vocabulary teaching and learning.