The theory of multiple intelligence in teaching English

The educational scope of a foreign language is great. It enriches students' inner world, expands and educates artistic exploration, international culture and friendship. In the initial stage of learning, students can quickly master the material, but due to the complexity of the material, students may get stuck. Sometimes the teachers are not able to see the problem and help the students in a timely manner. As a result, students have the feeling that foreign language learning is very difficult.

The premise that education should be sensitive to the individual cognitive differences of each student is based on the theory of multiple intelligences. Education should provide an environment in which diverse cognitive opportunities match individual intellectual abilities.

Students learn differently in every classroom or group, from preschool to university. Everyone is gifted, and everyone accepts challenges to their learning abilities and preferences. These learning abilities and preferences are defined as intelligences by Howard Gardner. Gardner developed the theory of multiple intelligences to explain how people learn differently. He started with a list of seven intelligences and expanded it to eight and nine. The theory suggests that one type of intelligence is stronger than the others, rather than that a person has only one of the nine intelligences. By Gardner's definition, they are logical-mathematical, spatial, linguistic, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and existential [1].

Gardner writes in his book that the educational program mainly stresses two types of skills: verbal-linguistic and logical-math. If a student does not display the above-mentioned types of abilities in a "proper" way, then the student will have to be content with little success and few opportunities to carry out academic activities. As a result, the student has a loss of interest and motivation for further learning. For self-fulfillment, he has extracurricular circles, sections, etc., where he can do what really interests him.

We analyzed the experiment of Herbert Puchta [2], the author of successful textbooks for children and adolescents, the well-known educator and researcher.

He has been studying how to apply research in cognitive psychology and brain function to the practice of teaching English as a foreign language for nearly 30 years.

Imagine a man and a woman are walking together. They want to walk hand in hand, but they are walking at different lengths. In fact, the step of the female is two-thirds that of the male. They start their walk at the same time, and their first step is with their left foot (so they are both on their right foot when they take their first step). Obviously, the woman will have to take more steps than her partner in the same amount of time because her stride is shorter and they want to walk together. How many steps must each take until their left feet touch the ground simultaneously?

Others try to solve the problem by means of mathematics, often in the form of an equation that is more or less complex.

Some start by drawing pictures on a piece of paper: first the steps of the man, then dividing these steps into smaller steps of the woman and trying to understand the answer.

In almost every group, there will be people who will immediately take a colleague under their arm and try to become physically "involved" in the activity.

Some students start by discussing the task with the neighbor or in small groups, while others say "don't interrupt" and find the answer themselves.

Not few participants neglect to analyze the wording of the problem itself. Perhaps there is some trickery involved?

On one occasion, a colleague even reported that he had tried to solve the problem in a rhythmic way, i.e. he had tried to "tap out" the steps of the couple! [2].

Howard Gardner's groundbreaking research on human intelligence revealed the existence of more than one type of mental ability called intelligence. Gardner argues very convincingly that only two human intelligences, linguistic and logical-mathematical, tend to be used in tests of intelligence and learning in general. He suggests that, as we see in the little experiment above, multiple intelligences should be distinguished to account for the much broader range of human abilities on which our thinking skills are based. In fact, when this activity is used with groups, it is not uncommon for all or nearly all of the intelligences identified in Gardner's work to be demonstrated [3].

You can easily see which (or combination of) intelligences you need to work with to solve a problem when you try a step experiment.

The more times we have to repeat a certain concept, the better we will learn it. A "concept" can be a new skill, a new knowledge, or a combination of the two. For instance, you don't know the concept of driving when you first start driving, but you start learning it every time you practice driving. The same is true when we learn a language or any other subject matter. Instructors build on what they learned yesterday, last week, or even last year. Repeating a concept improves learning, so the teacher can reinforce learning through different activities based on the theory of multiple intelligence. In addition, the teacher in the English class will use the types of assignments that will work best for the students who are dominated by a particular type of intelligence. You can try it yourself and see what works best for you [4].

Linguistic or language-smart. You probably like to write poetry, compose stories, and converse. Linguistically intelligent people enjoy metaphors, comparisons, homophones, and all kinds of language jokes and puns. Reading, speaking, listening, writing, spelling exercises, word games, and the like are best suited to you.

Logical-mathematical or number-and-reasoning-smart.What is called "scientific thinking" can be associated with this intelligence. It is often used in the analytical part of problem solving, making connections and correspondences between seemingly separate pieces of information, discovering patterns, and engaging in planning, prioritizing, and systems thinking. Grammatical exercises, problem solving, logic puzzles, computation, and critical thinking activities work better here.

Visual-spatial or picture-smart.This intelligence is related to the ability of the architect to visualize a building in his or her mind and to see the structure from all sides without difficulty. This intelligence is likely to be found in air traffic controllers, sculptors, gardeners, and civil engineers. Children often daydream, pretend to be invisible, and travel to magical places and times in their imaginations when visual intelligence predominates. A variety of visuals, colors, pictures, graphs, charts, videos, and the like help such students learn best [5].

Body-kinesthetic or body-smart. Precision and perfection of movement are the focus of this intelligence. This type of intelligence is most likely to be found in ballet dancers, mime artists, and athletes. Kinesthetic intelligence is often concerned with skills that are unknown to our conscious intelligence, such as those used when we ride a bicycle, catch a ball, park a car, type on a keyboard, and the like. Movement, role-playing, drama, hands-on activities, and the like are the best ways to learn something new.

Musical or music-smart. When removed from the world of rhythm, melody, volume, and sound for long periods of time, a person with a well-developed musical intelligence can become bored. To meet the needs of this intelligence, teachers use jazz singing, grammatical singing, sing songs, sometimes turn on music to help students relax, and allow students to listen to music on their MP3 players while writing essays. Instructors use music, sound recognition tasks, practice intonation and rhythm, repeat cursive sentences, individual and group sentences, and so on.

Intrapersonal or self-smart. When you are under the control of this intelligence, you are self-involved. When you wake up in the morning or fall asleep at night, you feel this state. A person who has this dominant intelligence needs time to be alone. They suffer when they have to socialize a lot. Such students may often appear to the instructor to be absent-minded or slow to learn. Allocating private time to study, reflecting, keeping a study diary, etc. works best for them.

Interpersonal or people-smart. The basic ability of such people is to pick up on the differences between other people, especially the differences between their moods, their temperaments, their motivations, and their intentions. A young child's ability to pick up on people's different moods is the simplest example. Political and religious leaders (such as Mahatma Gandhi), skilled parents and teachers, and those in professions that involve helping people have the most developed interpersonal intelligence. For such students, the teacher uses pair work, communicative tasks, role-playing, group work, discussions, etc.

Naturalistic or nature-smart. Howard Gardner has recently suggested the addition of this type of intelligence to the original list. It is about harmony with nature in the way that many early peoples did. It is about observation, awareness, and understanding of the rhythms and changes of nature. These students love nature-related topics. They love tasks that require them to categorize things and things like that.

Whatever tasks we set for our students, they will use different ways of thinking and learn in different ways when it comes to teaching English. For this reason, we should not use the term "intelligence" as an explanation for the success or failure of a particular student. There are many examples of students who are underachievers in school who go on to be highly successful in life. Likewise, we know that not every successful student will become a brilliant entrepreneur, scientist, physician, artist, or teacher [6].

Although it isn't possible to predict exactly which thought processes will be activated in our pupils, it is safe to say that using multiple intelligence activities is more likely to activate a broad range of intelligences in our pupils than teaching language purely 'linguistically'. Thus, even if you are not among the group of people with strong linguistic intelligence, most of you are not likely to be excluded from our classes, and your interest in language learning is likely to grow.