An Empirical Study On English Reading Teaching In Middle School Under The Guidance Of The Theory Of Multiple Intelligences

Economic globalization has become a worldwide topic and English has been the most prominent language used in communication.Reading as the main way for English language input plays an important role in teaching,of which goal is to cultivate students’ reading comprehension.The major groups of doing English reading are students with distinct intelligence structure and personality differences.They have different cognitive levels,learning foundation and different interests in English learning.Therefore,every teacher must find ways to stimulate students’ intelligence to help them make progress.Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences holds that people have at least eight kinds of intelligence,and each kind of intelligence has different strengths and weaknesses in different people.The theory requires teachers to respect each student and pay attention to their individual differences.At the same time,this requirement is consistent with the English curriculum standards for compulsory education(2011),which advocates "satisfying students’ personality development".In recent years,the high school entrance examination in Huaihua shows that English reading comprehension occupies a considerable proportion of middle schools’ English teaching.However,due to the stress of standardized test and single English teaching goals,teachers attach overmuch importance to impartinglanguage knowledge and skills to students,ignoring developing students’ intelligence in English reading process,which makes students are not willing to be exposed to English reading materials and lack enthusiasm for English reading.This study is based on the author’s teaching practice of English reading in middle school.Through the investigation and analysis of the intelligence distribution and English learning status of the junior students in the experimental class and the control class of a middle school in Huaihua,English reading teaching model is developed in the first volume of the Grade 8 English textbook based on the theory of Multiple Intelligences.It aims to solve these two problems: 1).What does the theory of multiple intelligences-based middle school reading teaching affect students’ English learning interest? 2).What does the theory of multiple intelligences-based middle school reading teaching affect students’ English reading performance?Before the experiment,the author made a statistical analysis of the English test scores of the experimental class and the control class at the beginning of the semester to determine the comparability of two classes’ English level.Then,the author conducted questionnaire surveys on the English learning status and the intelligence distribution of the experimental class and the control class.The survey data was collected and analyzed in the next step.During the experiment teaching for morethan 4 months,the author combined the teaching activities developed by multiple intelligences and carried out the students-oriented English reading teaching under the theory of multiple intelligences.After the end of the teaching experiment,the author conducted a post-test on junior students’ English learning status and reading scores to collect data and make statistical analysis.The results showed that the teaching mode and teaching method of the theory of multiple intelligences aroused junior students’ interest in reading and improved the junior students’ reading scores.At the end of this study,the author analyzed the limitations of the study and put forward some suggestions to urge educational researchers to further demonstrate the study.