A Correlational Study Of Junior High School Students’ Multiple Intelligences, Learnign Strategies And English Achievement

As time goes on, lots of researchers have put their focus on studying individuals’ differences in recent years, and they have combined the application of multiple intelligences with English teaching. With the learning strategies researches becoming more and more popular in English teaching field since 1950 s, many scholars devoted themselves in developing learning strategies. Besides, English achievement is a very important point which teachers, parents and students all care about, especially in China. However, the research which combines the three factors is not so sufficient, and the studies need to be continued. The aim of the paper is to study the correlations between multiple intelligences, learning strategies and English achievement. Although, some papers have studied the relationships, for example, Xu Jing has studied the relationship between the multiple intelligences and learning strategies. The subjects of his study are university students. In this paper, the author uses junior high school students as subjects. So, this paper will be an important supplement of this kind of study, especially for these teachers and students in junior high school of rural area. Through the study, the author hopes to help students choose learning strategies more effectively according to their intelligences characteristics, and by this way they can improve their English achievement as soon as possible.In the research, the author chooses 94 students from NO.5 junior high school in Delingha of Qing Hai province. Most of students are between 13 to 15 years old. And almost all of the students are from rural areas. Firstly the author will use the multiple intelligences survey(Walter Mc Kenzie 1999)and Strategy Inventory for Language Learning(Oxford 1990) to figure out junior high school students’ multiple intelligences and learning strategies. And then, the author will do an exam for the students to get their English scores. After that, the author will use the descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation to analyze the situations of junior high school students’ multiple intelligences and learning strategies. At last, the author will explain the relationships between multiple intelligences and learning strategies, as well as the relationships between multiple intelligences, learning strategies and English achievement.Based on the statistics analysis, the paper has got the following conclusions:Firstly, among the 94 students from NO.5 junior high school of city Delingha, the interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence and musical intelligence are more predominant; Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence and linguistic intelligence are next to visual-spatial intelligence and natural intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence is the weakest.Secondly, strategies which students use most frequently are cognitive strategy, meta-cognitive strategy and memory strategy, and the next are social strategy and affective strategy. Junior high school students use the compensation strategy the least frequently.Thirdly, linguistic intelligence has a positive correlation with English achievement. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence has a negative correlation with achievement. Other intelligences of the students have no significant correlations with the English achievement.Fourthly, all the learning strategies have positive correlations with the English achievement except for meta-cognitive strategy and social strategy.Fifthly, students’ memory strategy is correlated with linguistic intelligence and interpersonal intelligence, cognitive strategy also correlates with linguistic intelligence and interpersonal intelligence; compensation strategy has positive correlations with natural intelligence and visual-spatial intelligence, meta-cognitive strategy is correlated with interpersonal intelligence; affective strategy has correlations with linguistic intelligence and interpersonal intelligence; social strategy is correlated with linguistic intelligence and interpersonal intelligence. Through studying correlations between MI, LS and EA, the paper gives students some advices about how to choose their learning strategies according to their MI characteristic and also give teachers advice about how to teach English according to students’ MI situation.The author hopes that it will provide an advice for students to choose the learning strategies that suitable for themselves, especially those students from rural area.