Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research background
In China, traditional teaching pattern has the same teaching goals and teachingexam-oriented educational system remains its profound influence on students, teachers andparents. Students’ high scores are the eventual consequence they pursuit. New EnglishCurriculum Standard for compulsory education indicates clearly the objectives of oureducation as “for the full development of students, for the development of all students, andfor the personality development of students” (2011). Howard Gardner was a famousAmerican cognitive psychologist. In 1983, he proposed the theory of multiple intelligences(MI theory) in his book Frames of Mind. The agreememt has been made that the essence ofMI theory is similar to the new English Curriculum Standards. They both underline thatgreat attention should be paid by teachers to develop students’ multiple intelligences.Teachers may change their traditional teaching ideas. Students can be taught with theirnature to adopt more scientific and effective teaching methods. It may promote students’sall-rounded development and develop their remarkable talents.In recent years, more and more researches at home and abroad have begun to applyMI theory into various subjects. But there is little research about MI-based English readingteaching, especially in the middle school. It is a common phenomenon that most ofstudents have no interest towards English reading and low reading proficiency. Thepurpose of this thesis is to change this phenomenon and explore whether it is feasible toincorporate MI theory into English reading teaching.
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1.2 The significance and purpose of the thesis
That Gardner’s monographs of multiple intelligence theory published, marks that MItheory was born formally. Person’s intelligence is multifarious. Therefore, in the process ofteaching, teachers should pay attention to develop students’ intelligence, focus on student’s differences and teach students in accordance of their aptitude etc. In this theory, it has beenadvocated that we could develop students’ multi-intellectual concept, which conforms tostudents’ comprehensive quality education cultivation at the present stage in China. Thistheory not only provides a theoretical basis for our country’s English teaching reform butalso provides a new vision and direction on the English teaching research for our scientificinquirers.The main purpose of the study is to learn about students’ intelligence to improve theirEnglish reading proficiency in English teaching by applying MI theory. The forms ofactivities on account of multiple intelligence development are enriched so as to stimulatestudents interest in reading, cultivate students’ reading skills as well as promote thedevelopment of students’ multiple intelligences.
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Chapter Two Literature review
2.1 An overview of MI theory
French psychologists Alfred Bient and Theodore Simon create the first intelligenceQuotient(IQ)test in the world in 1905, which has been a controversial topic. IQ test onlyfocuses on linguistic and logical intelligence which mainly identifies according to the testscore. Without the realization of other intelligences, students’ cognitive and affectiveprocess are ignored seriously. That traditional intelligence measuring method reflectspeople’s initial understanding on intelligence.In 1983, Howard Gardner is an American developmental psychologist working atHarvard Graduate School of Education at Harvard university. He proposed the theory ofmultiple intelligence in his book Frames of Mind :The Theory of Multiple Intelligences(1983). At that time he proposes seven kinds of intelligence. These seven intelligencesinclude linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, spatial intelligence,bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, musical intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, andintrapersonal intelligence. Gardner also defines intelligence as “the ability to solveproblems that one encounters in real life; the ability to generate new problems to solve; theability to make something or offer a service that is valued within one’s culture”(Gardner,1983: 77). MI theory has challenged traditional views on intelligence. In Gardner’s view,all of these intelligences can be cultivated after a period of training, more attention shouldbe paid by teachers to respect and recognize individuals’ differences. Gardner (1999)suggests that normal human being’s intelligences can be classified into at least the following eight forms. Later he adds naturalistic intelligence to MI theory referred tobefore. Everyone has the eight kinds of intelligences and each human being has a uniquecombination of different intelligences. During the teaching process, teachers have to realizethat every student is excellent with his own combination of intelligences. Every studentshould be appreciated; their differences should be considered and all the students’ needsshould be met as much as possible.
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2.2 Research on reading
Reading is one of the important skills in language learning. On the research of reading,different experts have different opinions. William Grabe and Fredricka L. Stoller in thebook Teaching and Researching Reading (2002) describe reading as “the ability to drawmeaning from the printed page and interpret this information appropriately” , which meansthat reading involves the text, the reader, and the interaction between text and reader. It isthe interaction between reader’s reading purposes and manner of reading. Goodman (1967)characterizes reading as a psycholinguistic process. A reader can reconstruct efficientlybasing on utilizing background knowledge to predicte and check predictions against thetext in that process. That has been encoded as a graphic display. He summarizes that“reading always involves sampling from the physical representation in order to confirm ordisconfirm predications about meaning…the meaning that the reader will eventually deriveoriginates in his head rather than on the page.”Researchers have made great efforts to create a framework of reading in order to get ageneral understanding of reading process, and they came up with three reading models:bottom-up, top-down and interactive reading models. Later on schema reading model arealso mentioned.
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Chapter Three Research methodology .... 17
3.1 Research questions .......17
3.2 Subjects ......17
3.3 Instruments .......18
3.4 Applying MI theory to English reading teaching .........19
3.5 Research procedure ......22
3.6 A sample class in EC and CC .........25
Chapter Four Data analysis and discussions ...... 32
4.1 Analysis and discussions of students’ multiple intelligence distributions....... 32
4.2 Analysis and discussions of students’ attitudes towards English learning ...... 34
4.3 Analysis and discussions of the tests ......... 36
4.3.1 Analysis and discussions of pre-test ...... 36
4.3.2 Analysis and Discussions of post-test.... 38
4.3.3 The comparison of pre-test and post-test in CC ...... 39
4.3.4 The comparison of pre-test and post-test in EC ...... 40
4.4 Analysis of interviews ....... 41
Chapter Five Conclusion......... 44
5.1 Major findings of the study ..... 44
5.2 Limitations of the study..... 45
5.3 Suggestions of the study .... 46
Chapter Four Data analysis and discussions
4.1 Analysis and discussions of students’ multiple intelligencedistributions
The questionnaire (see Appendix Ⅰ) was adapted from Thomas Armstrong’squestionnaire on students’ multiple intelligences profiles in the classroom (1994). Thisquestionnaire was to investigate students’ multiple intelligences and found out whateach student’s strong intelligence was and what their weak intelligence was to completethe teaching activities and develop their comparatively weak intelligences together at thesame time. Before completing the questions, students would be honest and they weretold that their answers had nothing to do with their school records. Students wererequired to mark 0-4 scores to each description according to their practical situation;people who got more than 22 scores on one certain intelligence could be considered ashaving possessed such kind of intelligence strongly. It is shown that the number ofstudents who were strong in certain intelligence (i.e. the score of a certain intelligence ismore than 22) and the percentage that it takes among all the students. A summary of theresult of the questionnaire on students’ MI profiles is analyzed for EC. The following is abrief analysis of students’ intelligence composition.
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Conclusion
This thesis has studied the importance of MI theory and demonstrated how to helpstudents to improve their English reading proficiency. The author’s purposes proposed atthe beginning of the thesis have really come true. The major findings of the thesis can bedrawn.Firstly, through the comparison of the mean scores in the EC and CC at the beginningand the end of the experiment, it is obvious that English reading teaching based on MItheory can effectively improve middle school students’ English reading proficiency.Through a semester’ teaching experiment, English reading achievements in EC improvefaster than that in CC. As Christison (1999) stated that MI theory provides a way ofunderstanding intelligences, which can be used as a guide for designing activities thatinvolve multiple ways of learning rather than functioning as a prescribed method,technique or curriculum. It supports that MI theory can promote reading teachingeffectively and enrich the teaching activities.
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Reference (omitted)