An Application Of MI Theory To The Teaching Of English Reading In Junior Middle Schools

Proposed by Howard Gardner, the Multiple-Intelligence Theory (MI theory),which identifies eight intelligences, believes that people’s intelligence is diversifiedrather than singular. Taking the test of senior high school entrance examination intoconsideration, we can find that English reading comprehension section mainlyincluding cloze test, task-based reading, and text completion holds a large proportionin the examination. In the face of the exam-oriented pressure, school teachers oftenneglect the cultivation of other intelligences in English reading classes, putting toomuch emphasis on the cultivation of language knowledge and linguistic skills in thejunior middle school English reading classes. This leads to students’ unwillingness toread English materials.This thesis is a study of the teaching of English reading of junior students. Theauthor takes the students of the experimental class and the comparative class fromJijiang Middle School in Jiangjin Chongqing as experimental subjects, and surveystheir intelligent strength and basic information of English reading with the PEP GradeEight English teaching materials. Guided by MI theory, the author develops aninstructive model suitable for junior students. Moreover, the reading part in “Unit2How often do you exercise?” from the first volume of PEP Grade Eight is taken as thebasis of the case design.In order to confirm the comparability of the two classes’ English proficiency atthe beginning of the experiment, the author analyzes the statistics of the marks of thefirst month test of experimental class and the comparative class. After that, theintelligent strength and the basic information of English reading, reflected by thestudents of experimental class and the comparative class, are analyzed by aquestionnaire survey. The author takes the data gained from the questionnaire survey asthe basis for the design of the reading lessons in the experimental class, and makes ananalysis of the intelligent strength and the basic information of English reading of the students from experimental class.During the two-month experimental English teaching, the author carries outteaching of English reading with the activities developed by MI theory and thestudent-centered teaching strategies under the guidance of MI theory, trying to promotethe multiple intelligences and English reading abilities of the students.At the end of the experiment, the author designs a chart of English readingclassroom evaluation under the guidance of MI theory and gives a post-test to studentsof the experimental class. And the author makes a statistical analysis of the collecteddata. The author finally reaches the following conclusions: Through teaching ofEnglish reading under the guidance of MI theory, the English performance as well asthe reading interest and reading enthusiasm of the experimental class are improvedeffectively, which, to some extent, proves the effectiveness of the model for teachingEnglish reading designed by the author. At the end of this thesis, the author analyzesthe limitations of this research, and summarizes several teaching suggestions whichmay be helpful to numerous educators.