Multiple Intelligence Theory In English Language Teaching

Introduction

Since EFL reading carries great weight in foreign language teaching, great efforts have been exerted to improve students’ reading ability. And a good understanding of how students learn and how the teachers teach becomes a key point in the changing society. Teachers are required to change their teaching styles to meet the needs of reading teaching. The teacher’s role is changing. To improve the quality of reading teaching, four concrete problems should be solved. The first one is to transform the EFL reading teaching methods, which is essential to other transformations of reading teaching. In this respect, it calls for bottom-up model’s integration with the top-down model and schema theory. The second one is to clarify the relationship

The theory first swept the worlds of education, cognitive science and developmental psychology with the publication of his treatise, Frames of Mind. Traditionally, intelligence is defined as a uniform cognitive capacity people are born with. This capacity can be easily measured by short-answer tests. Many educators, researchers, students and parents have long rejected multiple choices testing as a measure of intelligence. Traditional academic intelligence is not totally necessary and in many cases it is clearly not sufficient. Multiple intelligence theory has served as a rallying point for a reconsideration of educational practice of the last century. MI challenged traditional beliefs in the fields of education and cognitive sciences. In Gardner’s definition, “Intelligence is a bio-psychological potential to process information that can be activated in a cultural setting to solve problems or create products that are of value in a culture”(Gardner, 1999a: 34). *He endeavored to define intelligence in a much broader way than

Poets exemplify this intelligence in its mature form. Students who enjoy playing with rhymes, who pun, who always have a story to tell, who quickly acquire other language------including sign language------all exhibit linguistic intelligence.

Logical-mathematical intelligence enables individuals to use and appreciate abstract relations. Scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers all rely on this intelligence. So do the students who “live” baseball statistics or who carefully analyze the components of problems------either personal or school-related------before systematically testing solutions.

Spatial intelligence makes it possible for people to perceive visual or spatial information, to transform this information, and to recreate visual images from memory. Well-developed spatial capacities are needed for the work of architects, sculptors, and engineers. The students who turn first to the graphs, charts, and pictures in their textbooks, who like to “web” their ideas before writing a paper, and who fill the blank space around their notes with intricate patterns are also using their spatial intelligence. While usually tied to the visual modality, individuals who are visually impaired can also exercise spatial intelligence to a high