An MIT-based Study On The Strategies In English Vocabulary Teaching For Junior Middle School

Vocabulary is one of the fundamental constituents of language. It is highly important for language teaching, especially for China’s junior students who start learning English systematically, it is much more significant. However, according to the current situations in junior middle schools, there are still lots of problems to be worth exploring. Through the local survey, the writer discovers the phenomenon that teachers often ignore students’ individual differences and use a single teaching method in the process of English vocabulary teaching so that students lose their interest and confidence gradually. However, a great deal of literature has been shown, the theory of multiple intelligences(MIT) which is put forward by Gardner who is a famous American psychologist, the theory can be used to guide language teaching, it is the probable way to resolve the problem.Whereas above the reason, the paper draws up researching into MIT and MIT-based strategies in English vocabulary teaching for junior middle schools, explores the feasibility that MIT is used to guide English vocabulary teaching in junior middle school, and enriches the methods and strategies of English vocabulary teaching in order to increase students’ interest and confidence and improve the efficiency of English vocabulary learning.The paper adopts first some research methods including questionnaire, classroom observation, and interview to investigate the current situations of junior students’ English vocabulary learning and teachers’ vocabulary teaching, as well as the state of students’ intelligence, including differences and features. Through the survey of some teachers and students in Grade seven, in Xindian middle school, the writer finds that students are afraid of learning vocabulary universally and their learning interest is not high, and teachers in the school usually use a single method like grammar translation. And the students’ intelligence test shows that the overall level of their intelligences is not high, relatively, the top three intelligences are visual-spatial intelligence, musical intelligence and naturalist intelligence.The paper elaborates MIT, including the origin, main points, development, application, achievements and the feasibility and principles of applying MIT in junior middle school vocabulary teaching. Next, with the guidance of MIT, the author designs the specific strategies of English vocabulary teaching for junior middle school and the steps of using the strategies, including analyzing students and teaching materials and setting teaching goals. Meanwhile, taking the textbook Go for it( book one) for example, which was published lately by People’s Education Press in 2012, the paper designs some specific and practical examples by combining students’ MIT with vocabulary teaching in junior middle schools. Then, in order to prove the effectiveness of MIT-based strategies in the paper, the writer carries out a three-month experiment in Class two(Experimental Class), Grade seven in Xindian middle school. The results of the experiment show that the score of post-test in Experimental Class is higher than pre-test after applying the MIT-based strategies in English vocabulary teaching, and the students’ interest and confidence have been improved greatly by investigating after experiment. But the score in Control Class has no obvious change during the pre-test and post-test. Therefore, applying MIT-based strategies can increase students’ interest and confidence and improve the efficiency of English vocabulary learning for junior high students’.