MI Theory-Based English Reading Teaching In Junior Middle School

Reading is not only an essential ability to learn a language,but also is the foundation of mastering a language as well as a main tool to obtain information.In the past half century,reading is the main part on the whole and listening,speaking and writing is the supplement in English reading teaching of New China.For many Chinese learners of English,it is very significant for them to read a lot of materials.Although reading plays a very important role in the class,there are many problems in reading teaching.Influenced by the traditional reading teaching,in most of classrooms,teachers usually tend to pay more attention to cultivating students’ verbal/linguistic intelligence and logical/mathematical intelligence.As Howard Gardner(1983)put forward Multiple Intelligence(MI)Theory,it has changed people’s view that people just possess two intelligences generally,namely verbal/linguistic intelligence and logical/mathematical intelligence.In fact,people have other six intelligences which are visual/spatial intelligence,musical intelligence,bodily/kinesthetic intelligence,interpersonal intelligence,intrapersonal intelligence and naturalist intelligence.With further research on the theory of multiple intelligences and the reform of foreign languager teaching,more and more MI-based reading teaching has come into the classroom.Although there are some researches on MI-based English teaching,most of these are related to primary school or kindergarten students.Instead,MI-based English reading teaching in junior middle school is very rare.Based on the previous research,the present paper aims to answer to the following research questions.(1).Can English reading teaching based on Multiple Intelligence Theory improve junior middle school students’ English reading comprehension achievements?(2).Can English reading teaching based on Multiple Intelligence Theory promote junior middle school students’ motivation in English reading?In order to fully address these two research questions,the researcher randomly selected two classes of Grade Seven in Xinxing Junior Middle School as the control class and the experimental class respectively.In total,108 students are involved in the present study,including 53 students from control class and 55 students from the experimental class.In the experimental class,the researcher carried out the English reading teaching which was Multiple Intelligence Theory-based method.While in control class,the researcher adopted the traditional English reading teaching method without involving the Multiple Intelligence Theory.Besides,the questionnaires,pre-test,post-test and SPSS Version 18(Statistical Package for the Social Sciences)were used as the instrument of the present study.The whole experiment lasted for two months.The study has found that statistically,the experimental class outperforms the students in control class in terms of their English reading ability.What’s more,the statistical analysis also reveals that the motivation of English learning in the experimental class is also much stronger than that of control class.Therefore,it can be concluded that MI-based English reading instruction contributes effectively to enhancing students’ English reading ability and their English learning motivation.These findings shed great lights for English teachers to apply the multiple intelligence theory to the reading teaching.Meanwhile,this paper also points out some factors that limit the preset study and provides some suggestions for the further research.