An Empirical Study Of Mit-Based Differentiated Instruction In Higher Vocational Colleges’ English Teaching

With the rapid development of the higher vocational education in China, the society expects more and more from the graduates of higher vocational colleges (HVC). The goal of higher vocational education is to cultivate high-technological talents to meet the increasing social demands. For English teaching in HVC, according to The Basic Requirements of English Teaching of Higher Vocational Education(pilot edition) for non-English major students in HVC issued by the Ministry of Education in December2000, the classroom instruction aims at helping students acquire basic knowledge and practical skills of English. Because of the students’ obvious differences in English readiness, learning abilities and styles, interest, and motivation, the traditional teaching mode with unified teaching content, teaching methods and assessments can not meet the requirement. The effective teaching to be called for should be changed from teacher-centeredness into student-centeredness and students’ comprehensive practical language abilities can thus be developed. Therefore, teaching reform is imperative.Multiple intelligences theory (MIT) was put forward by American psychologist of Harvard University, Harward Gardner, in1983. The theory has changed the traditional view on intelligences which regards verbal-linguistic intelligence and logical-mathematical intelligence as the cores of human’s intelligence structure. MIT holds that a person’s intelligence consists of nine different intelligences, namely, verbal-linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, visual-spatial intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, musical rhythmic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence naturalist intelligence, and existentialist intelligence. All of the nine intelligences exist independently and equally. MIT means that every student has his/her own strong intelligences and weak intelligences, which demands that teachers should teach accordingly to the students’ various intelligence structures, make good use of his/her advantages (strong intelligences), exploit his/her potentialities, and promote his/her all-round development. Differentiated Instruction (DI) refers to the group instruction in a class, which can meet students’ individual needs so as to promote individuals’ learning and, based on his/her former level, fully develop each student’s ability and learning (Hua,2001). DI, based on MIT, stresses students’ differences in their age, gender, personality, ability, interest, and cognitive style. In the process of DI, teachers are supposed to employ multiple teaching content, teaching methods, and assessments to meet differentiated needs of students. It focuses on students’ progress and it advocates student-centered teaching methods.DI has been recognized and practiced in many countries. In China, its efficiency also has been proved through experiments in some primary schools, middle schools, and a few colleges and universities. As an important part of higher education in China, higher vocational education is in the middle of reforming for better teaching results. Would DI be fit for the education at this level—higher vocational education and its particular educatees? What could be the intelligence features of the students in HVC? Would DI be effective in improving the students’learning interest, confidence, motivation, and performances?An experiment was conducted in two parallel classes:a control class and an experiment class. DI was carried out through the whole period of a term in the experiment class, and traditional teaching was meanwhile implemented in the control class. The experiment aimed at testing the efficiency of MIT-based DI through a term’s teaching by comparing the differences between the two classes in learning interest, motivation, and English proficiency. Before the experiment, the students’ English readiness, interest and intelligence structures in the two classes had been recorded and examined by questionnaires, interviews, and tests. During the experiment, the teaching displayed the features of diversity in the experiment class. Various class activities according to students’ multiple intelligences were performed, different tasks and homework for different students’ readiness were assigned and completed, and multi-evaluation was implemented embodying all-round performances and progress of students. At the same time, traditional teaching was performed in the control class by unified teaching and single assessment. When the term ended, a posttest was administered to explore any disparities between the two classes and a questionnaire was carried out to investigate the students’ attitudes toward DI.The results show that students in HVC performed better on intrapersonal intelligence and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence than on other intelligences. More importantly, the students’ learning interest, motivation, and performances had been stimulated and improved to a larger degree through DI. In addition, the students had showed great enthusiasm and support for DI.DI has been a well-proven teaching method in many schools and universities, but the uniqueness of HVC requires that it should not be used in the same way as in regular institutions of higher learning. Therefore, tentative DI was performed in the experiment and deeper and more meaningful study on the topic is expected.