A Study Of Oral English Teaching In Primary School Based On Multiple Intelligence Theory

The theory of Multiple Intelligence(MI for short)was proposed by an American developmental psychologist called Howard Gardner,whose published book named Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences(1983)marked the beginning of the study of the MI.Howard Gardner(1999)published another book named Intelligence Reframed,according to this book,everyone has got at least eight kinds of intelligences as follows: linguistic intelligence,logic-mathematical intelligence,visual-spatial intelligence,bodily-kinesthetic intelligence,musical-rhythmic intelligence,interpersonal intelligence,intrapersonal intelligence,and naturalist intelligence.No one has the same intelligence structure.If educators can arouse the potential MI of students,then education will be successful to a great extent.As we all know,interest is the best teacher,so,stimulating students' interest in learning is one of the important tasks in primary English teaching.However,the traditional teaching mode merely focuses on imparting knowledge.Teachers usually tend to neglect students' personality development and the training of language skills,as a result,many primary school students have lost interest and confidence in English learning,pupils' oral English is very poor,most students can not communicate with others in English,they can not express themselves in English fluently and actively.The theory of MI pays close attention to the intelligent diversity and individual differences of students,which has provided new teaching ideas for English teaching.This thesis intended to explore implementation of the theory of MI in English teaching in primary school,with particular emphasis on testing the effectiveness of the theory of MI employed in primary English teaching through a teaching experiment.This study aimed to answer the following two questions:(1)Is primary English teaching based on the theory of MI better than traditional teaching in arousing students' interest in English learning?(2)Is the theory of MI more effective than traditional approach in improving students' oral English in primary school? For this purpose,the author carried out a one-term teaching experiment which involved two classes in Binjiang No.1 Primary School in Ganzhou City of Jiangxi Province.The number of these two classes is 46 in theexperimental class and 45 in the control class.The experimental class received teaching based on the theory of MI,while the control class received traditional teaching mode.The research was carried out with the instruments such as questionnaires,classroom observation and oral tests.These two classes are similar in oral English and learning situation before the teaching experiment according to the pre-test and the first classroom observation.From the results of post-test,we can find that students' oral English in the experimental class is much better than that in the control class after the teaching experiment.In addition,students' learning interest has been greatly aroused in the experimental class according to the second classroom observation and the third questionnaire.Thus the conclusions can be drawn as follows:(1)Primary English teaching based on the MI theory has a greater advantage than traditional approach to arouse students' interest in English learning.(2)Primary English teaching based on the MI theory is more helpful than the traditional approach to strengthen students' spoken English.