The Study Of Differentiated Instruction In Junior English Class—from The Perspective Of Multiple Intelligences Theory

With the development of curriculum reform, quality-oriented education has been the core concept of education in the21st century. The main task of the English curriculum for basic education is to stimulate and cultivate students’ interest and their confidence in learning English. However, in most of secondary schools in our country, the classes are usually big-sized. Students’personalities, interest, attitudes and abilities towards English learning are quite different in one class and they are at different English level. But most teachers use the same content with the same teaching method ignoring students’individual differences, for which many students gradually lose their interests and motivations in English learning. A one-size-fits-all approach can never meet the various needs of students. Teaching should proceed in differentiated instruction.Differentiated instruction (DI) helps teachers to reconsider their traditional teaching methods and enable them to take full consideration of students’individual differences in order to make teaching beneficial to all kinds of students. According to Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence (MI) theory, students in one class are largely different because they have different combinations of eight intelligences. And teachers can engage students in instruction according to their intelligence profile. MI theory provides a theoretical basis for differentiated instruction and makes it possible in the big-sized class. In view of that, the thesis focuses on the application of differentiated instruction to junior English class from the perspective of MI theory in order to improve students’ interest and language proficiency in English learning.The experiment is carried out in a junior middle school for one school semester. There are some instruments adopted in this experiment, which include literature analysis, tests, questionnaires and interviews, etc. The chosen subjects, with the average age of13years old, come from two parallel classes in Grade Seven. There are52students in the experimental class, and the control class consists of53students. The two classes are taught by the same teacher with approximately the same level of English competence before the experiment. During the experiment, the author adopts MI-based differentiated instruction in experimental class while uses traditional teaching methods in control class. After applying differentiated instruction for one semester, students’ learning interest and English achievement have a significant improvement in the experimental class.In the west, the studies on DI and MI theory have been applied a lot, but in China it has just begun in recent times, which have not formed a systematic and complete theory. The author hopes that this experimental research is helpful to enrich and develop the study of DI and MI theory in junior English class, and provides some implications and suggestions for further study in this field.