The Application Of The Multiple Intelligences Theory In Primary English Teaching

People have studied the meaning of intelligence for many years. In 1983, Howard Gardner published a book Frames of Mind which symbolized the beginning of the study of Theory of Multiple Intelligences and changed the traditional view of intelligence a lot. According to Gardner, in addition to Verbal-Linguistic Intelligences and Logic-Mathematical Intelligence, there are six other kinds of Intelligence: Visual-spatial Intelligence, Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence, Musical-Rhythmic Intelligence, Interpersonal Intelligence, Intrapersonal Intelligence, and Naturalist Intelligence. The theory of multiple intelligences stresses that everyone has a range of relatively independent intelligences, which show different combinations of individual intelligence. Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences provided the powerful support for differentia teaching.The Theory of Multiple Intelligences has become a very influential theory on intelligence, which gives educators a multitude of approaches to understand the students. It can also help students obtain the greatest success in their lives by exploiting the potentialities of individual intelligences .The development of students'multiple intelligences requires the change of the views on intelligence and students, as well as reformation of curriculum and teaching .Outline for the reform of basic education curriculum pointed out,"teachers should respect the personality differences to meet the needs of students so that all the students can make great progress."However, the traditional teaching mode is carried out with the same targets of teaching, teaching methods, teaching requirements, as well as the same teaching model. Especially primary school English teaching methods are still under exploration. A common phenomenon is that pupils'interest in English is decreasing as their English level goes up and pupils become more and more passive in English class.It is an important task for primary school English teachers to arouse students'interest. However, the traditional teaching mode is focused only on transmitting English knowledge and training language skills. Teachers usually tend to treat pupils as homogeneous group, which is presented with the same lecture, exercises and the same answer with similar time limits. Pupils are expected to absorb the knowledge presented by the English teacher with an emphasis on the use of language and logical analysis. The learning methodology and the acquisition of the English are evaluated only by means of tests, and the grade becomes the demonstration of the ability for memorization. As a result, the individual differences of students are seriously neglected and many pupils gradually lose interest and confidence in English learning. At the same time, teachers also neglect to do enough investigation on pupils when designing the teaching plan. After teaching, the teacher also lacks necessary assessment to the pupils and teaching processes. In order to solve these problems, teachers can adopt a new teaching model based on the theory of Multiple Intelligences, which is taken into account the different needs of students, using various strategies, a flexible variety of teaching methods.This thesis aims to apply the theory of multiple intelligences to the foreign language instruction in primary schools. Based on the theory of multiple intelligences, a new teaching and learning process should be established with a brand-new pattern, which focuses on the pupil's strengths and caters for their own intelligence type. It can help us understand the diversity we observe in our students and provide a framework for addressing these differences in our teaching. Many learning styles should be encouraged to be used within our classroom, which reminds teachers of finding the most appropriate way for his or her students in the real context. After all, individual learners accept different teaching methods in line with their own characteristics.The study provides both quantitative and qualitative data, which may be helpful for English teachers to be more aware of the active role that interest plays in English classroom. By identifying the students'learning style and recognizing the potential sources, the instructors can help them find out some countermeasures to improve interest and then obtain good learning efficiency.By conducting an empirical research into the application of the theory of multiple intelligences to the primary English teaching, in which two classes in a primary school were chosen as samples, the author found out that Multiple Intelligences Theory contributed significantly to language learning in at least three aspects: (1) It aroused the pupils'interest in learning English. (2) It boosted the pupils'confidence in learning English. (3)It improved the pupils'test scores of English.