A Study On The Application Of Buffet-style English Homework Design Based On Multiple Intelligences Theory From The Perspective Of The Activity View Of English Teaching

Howard Gardner,a famous educator and psychologist,put forward Multiple Intelligences Theory(MIT)in 1983.He thinks human beings have eight independent intelligences: linguistic intelligence,logical-mathematical intelligence,naturalist intelligence,spatial intelligence,musical intelligence,interpersonal intelligence,intrapersonal intelligence and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.This study presents a creative homework design called buffet-style English homework on the basis of Multiple Intelligences Theory.It also illustrates its design principles including self-design principle,stratified principle,progressive principle and so on in order to improve learners' homework engagement and develop learners' superior and inferior intelligences.Additionally,the latest senior high school curriculum standard issued in 2017 advocates the activity view of English teaching,which is based on the integration of the theme-as-context,discourse,linguistic knowledge,cultural knowledge,language skills and learning strategies.The activity view of English teaching aims to improve the quality of teaching and learning in the traditional teaching model and optimizing learning strategies.Reform is the core of the 2017 senior high school curriculum standard,and English homework reform is an important aspect of the new curriculum reform since homework is the extension of classroom teaching.The author holds that buffet-style of English homework meets learners' needs and can optimize their autonomous learning.Based on Multiple Intelligences Theory and the activity view of English teaching,this study discusses the application of buffet-style English homework to English learning.Below are three research questions:1: How have learners' attitudes changed towards buffet-style English homework in terms of homework duration,homework practicality,level of homework difficulty and level of homework interest?2: What kind of impact does buffet-style homework exert on high school learners' behavioral engagement,cognitive engagement and affective engagement?3: After being exposed to buffet-style English homework,what happened to the learners in terms of superior and inferior intelligences?The participants were Grade 1 senior high school learners in two classes,from a senior high school in Dalian Development Area,with 50 in each class.These learners had the same English teacher and teaching contents.Meanwhile,their teaching procedures were same except for the assignments of English homework.This experiment lasted for half a year.The research instrumentation was questionnaires,interviews and tests.First,this study found that,by and large,the participants showed more interests in the buffet-style homework that did not take them much time,such as drawing a mind map,singing English songs,drawing an emoji,writing reflections and dubbing some clips for English movies.In contrast,though they understood that some time-consuming homework such as simulation of journalists,simulation of English interviews and Model Union Nations had a high level of practicality,learners showed less interest in them.Second,buffet-style English homework can help learners develop a better homework engagement,including behavioral,cognitive and affective engagement.Third,buffet-style English homework could develop some learners' superior intelligences and help them find their potentials.However,due to the fact that learners did their buffet-style English homework in groups,some of them could not transform their inferior intelligences to be their superior intelligences.