A Study Of The Application Of Multiple Intelligences Theory In English Reading Teaching At Senior High Schools

It is well known that English reading plays an indispensable role in English learning.How to improve students'reading proficiency has always been a hot topic among the English teachers.In traditional English reading teaching at senior high schools,teachers always pay too much attention to students'verbal-linguistic intelligence and logical-mathematical intelligence,ignoring other intelligences,such as bodily-kinesthetic intelligence,the interpersonal intelligence and the naturalist intelligence.This English reading teaching mode is teacher-centered,which puts students into a passive English reading condition with low classroom participation spirit,thus making the students lose their interest in English reading.So this research aims at attempting to use a new English reading teaching method based on the theory of multiple intelligences to arouse students'interest in English reading and improve their reading proficiency.Howard Gardner,a professor of psychology at Harvard University in the United States,proposes a new theory about intelligence in the 1980s,which is the theory of multiple intelligences,basically MIT.Gardner breaks the limitation of traditional theory of intelligence by defining intelligence as the ability of solving problems and creating value in a multi-cultural environment.He also puts forward nine kinds of intelligences,namely verbal-linguistic intelligence,logical-mathematical intelligence,visual-spatial intelligence,bodily-kinesthetic intelligence,musical intelligence,interpersonal intelligence,intrapersonal intelligence,naturalist intelligence and existential intelligence.In this research,the author analyzes the problems students have in their English reading and regards MIT as a theoretical foundation to carry out the teaching experiment.The research focuses on the following three questions:1.What are the senior high school students'main problems in their English reading?2.What are the advantages of MIT for senior high school English reading teaching?3.How does the application of MIT in English reading teaching at senior high schools arouse students'English reading interest and improve their reading proficiency?In order to answer the questions above,the author of the thesis carries out an experiment at the Affiliated High School of Henan University in Kaifeng from September 1^st in 2017 to January 31^st in 2018.The subjects of the research are the students from the two classes?Class Seven and Class Eight?in Senior One.Class Seven is the experimental class?EC?with sixty students,while Class Eight serves as the control class?CC?with sixty-two students.In the experiment,the author adopts the new English reading teaching method based on MIT in the EC,while the author conducts the traditional English reading teaching method in the CC.Students in both classes participate in the pre-test and the post-test.In order to know students'problems in English reading,the author interviews the students of the EC before and after the experiment.She also carries out the English reading interest questionnaire and the multiple intelligences questionnaire with the purpose of understanding students'basic situation.Then SPSS 20.0 is used to analyze the data.The results show that after the experiment students'reading scores in the EC are obviously higher,and their interest in English reading has been significantly improved.This research reveals that the application of MIT in English reading teaching at senior high schools can stimulate students'learning interest,improve students'reading skills and English reading proficiency,and enhance the quality of English reading teaching.