Empirical Study On Senior High School English Teaching Based On MI Theory

Since Howard Gardner, the American psychologist, put forward the theory of multipleintelligences in the1980s, a great deal of linguists has conducted numerous studies on thistheory.On the basis of the MI theory, this research adopted various research methods, such asliterature review, experiment, interviews and questionnaires. The main purpose of thisresearch is to explore the positive effect of the MI theory-based teaching strategies on thestudents’interest in English learning and their English proficiency.The subjects were divided into the control class and the experiment class. Theresearcher applied SPSS19.0to analyze the results of pretest and posttest by DescriptiveAnalysis, two Independent Sample Tests, Independent Sample T-test and two RelatedSample Tests. These students came to notice their own strong intelligences in theexperiment, and increased their self-confidence in English learning. Besides, they can makegood use of their strong intelligences to improve their interest in English learning andEnglish proficiency.The statistics show:(1) Before the experiment, all the students know nothing about theMI theory and little about their own strong intelligences;(2) After the experiment, all thestudents in the experiment class gained some information about the basic knowledge aboutthe MI theory through the lecture and relevant materials. They can also apply their strongintelligence to the learning activities;(3) Before the experiment, the two classes had nosignificant difference in the result of pretest, but the results after the experiment showedthat the students in the experiment class was apparently outperformed to those in thecontrol class.(4) The questionnaire and the interviews after the experiment also showedthat this experiment possessed a positive impact on the students’interest in English learningand their English proficiency.This research discusses the influence of the MI theory-based teaching strategies on thestudents’English learning in senior high school. It is expected that this research can providepractical guidance for English teachers in senior high schools and researchers who areinterested in this topic, so as to promote the development of the English teaching in seniorhigh school.