A Correlational Study Between Vocational School Students' Multiple Intelligences And English Reading Performance

English reading process can be regarded as the result of all kinds of intelligences actively participating in language activities,which is usually affected by many factors,such as motivation,learning styles,learning strategies,Multiple Intelligences and so on.Among these factors,Multiple Intelligences,as an important variable in learners' individual differences,plays an important role in the process and effectiveness of English reading.Numerous researchers and scholars have devoted themselves to the research of Multiple Intelligences.However,few have focused on the correlational study between Vocational School students' Multiple Intelligences and English reading performance.In order to enrich this field,this paper is undertaken to explore the distribution tendency of Multiple Intelligences of Vocation School students and to examine the correlation between Vocational School students' Multiple Intelligences and their English reading performance through the questionnaire and interview.The research questions addressed in this thesis are:1)What is the distribution tendency of Multiple Intelligences of Vocation School students?(1)What is the overall distribution tendency?(2)Are there any differences in Multiple Intelligences between high achievers and low achievers?If yes,what are the differences?(3)Are there any differences in Multiple Intelligences between boy students and girl students?If yes,what are the differences?2)What's the correlation between Vocational School students' Multiple Intelligences and their English reading performance?(1)What is the overall correlation?(2)What is the respective correlation between nine types of Multiple Intelligences and English reading performance?Both quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted in the study.The quantitative research mainly involves a Multiple Intelligences questionnaire designed by Walter McKenzie in 1999 and the Chinese version is used to avoid misunderstanding or ambiguity.The whole internal reliability reaches.936.The questionnaire is handed out to 90 Grade Two students from Tai Xing Vocational School on March 20th,2018,and finally 80 are found valid.Then,the data is processed by SPSS 17.0.The qualitative research is a semi-structured interview with 10 students being selected from those whose questionnaires are considered valid.The interview is carried out in Chinese and the whole process is tape-recorded.Afterwards,the results are transcribed into English and the transcriptions of the interview are carefully analyzed.Detailed analysis of both quantitative and qualitative research yields the following findings:Firstly,the results of descriptive analyses reveal that in Tai Xing Vocational School,students' Total Intelligence is high,with the mean score reaching 3.452.In terms of nine types of specific Multiple Intelligences,the mean scores are all above 3.00 except Linguistic Intelligence.Moreover,students are perceived to possess the highest Intrapersonal Intelligence,followed by Interpersonal Intelligence and Spatial Intelligence.Besides,their Naturalist and Existential Intelligences are relatively lower than Logical-Mathematical,Musical and Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligences.The lowest intelligence lies in Linguistic Intelligence.There do exist some differences between low achievers and high achievers.On the whole,the total mean score for high achievers is higher than that for low achievers and the difference in Total Intelligence is significant(p=.013).When it comes to nine specific intelligences,the two groups differentiate significantly with each other in Intrapersonal Intelligence(p=.003)and Spatial Intelligence(p=.004),with high achievers getting higher mean scores.Moreover,the difference in Linguistic Intelligence between the two groups is highly significant(p=.000).In addition,high achievers get higher mean scores than low achievers in almost all the specific intelligences except Logical-Mathematical Intelligence.However,the two groups do not show much difference in Interpersonal Intelligence(p=.489),Logical-Mathematical Intelligence(p=.158),Musical Intelligence(p=.571),Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence(p=.484),Natural Intelligence(p=.067)and Existential Intelligence(p=.342)as each p value is higher than.05.Boy and girl students do not differ from each other in Total Inelligence(p=.473>.05),though the total mean score for girl students is higher than that for boy students.However,when all the nine types of specific intelligences are examined,boy and girl students show much difference in Intrapersonal Intelligence(p=.029)and Linguistic Intelligence(p=.024).In addition,boy students score higher in Logical-Mathematical Intelligence.Spatial Intelligence,Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence and Existential Intelligence than girl students while girls get higher scores in Interpersonal Intelligence.Music Intelligence and Naturalist Intelligence than boys.However,there exist no significant differences in these seven intelligences for the p values are higher than.05.Secondly,there do exist some correlation between Vocational School students" Multiple Intelligences and their English reading performance.Students' Total Intelligence is positively and highly correlated to their English reading performance(r=.384**)at the.01 level.In terms of nine types of specific Multiple Intelligences,Intrapersonal Intelligence,Spatial Intelligence,Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence and Linguistic Intelligence are positively correlated with students'English reading performance at the.01 level,while there is also a positive correlation between Musical Intelligence and English reading performance at the.05 level.Besides,Linguistic Intelligence,compared with Intrapersonal Intelligence,Spatial Intelligence,Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence and Musical Intelligence,its correlation is the strongest(r=.592**).Spatial Intelligence(r=.435**)ranks second followed by Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence(r=.308**)and Intrapersonal Intelligence(r=.304**).As for Musical Intelligence,the correlation is weak(r=.236*).In light of the findings,this paper makes some pedagogical implications for both teachers and students.For teachers,they should take measures to stimulate students' awareness of Multiple Intelligences,guide students to use the proper intelligences in English learning and pay more attention to the low achievers in developing their Multiple Intelligences.In addition,since Intrapersonal Intelligence,Spatial Intelligence,Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence and Linguistic Intelligence influence students' English reading performance,teachers should develop students'intelligences in these aspects,and make good use of these intelligences to improve students'English reading performance.For students,they must improve the awareness of intelligence use and try to make an extensive use of Multiple Intelligences.