Teach English in Yongle Zhen - Aba Zangzu Qiangzu Zizhizhou —

In the words of Albert Einstein “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." Today the 1921 Nobel Prize winner is considered a genius, yet his education and scholarly life was anything but brilliant. He was unable to speak fluently with ease and grace until age nine, and some of his early education teachers thought him to be retarded or mentally handicapped. Later in life, he failed his first attempt at the entrance exams in literature, politics and French when applying to study at Zurich Polytechnic. (Albert Einstein Biography accessed July 2019) The fact that one of the most influential theoretical physicists of the century, if not of all time, struggled so much in the traditional educational system has important implications for the teaching profession. Decades after Einstein’s death, Dr. Howard Gardner developed the theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI), which provides a possible reason as to why such an astonishing mind was so misjudged by traditional educators. The traditional educational system is based upon psychological research at the turn of the 20th century, which aimed at measuring general human intelligence. Scientists like Charles Spearman and Alfred Binet set upon measuring human intelligence as a single factor, which they termed an Intelligence Quotient (IQ). The IQ test consists of several tasks measuring short-term memory, analytical thinking, mathematical ability, and spatial recognition. Dr. Gardner, on the other hand, is led by empirical evidence which suggests that sperate psychological processes compute information from differing symbol systems such as linguistic, numerical, pictorial, gestural, etc. He proposes that the human mind is modular in design and therefore there are eight different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults. In alphabetical order, these intelligences are: Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence (“body smart”), Interpersonal intelligence (“people smart”), Intrapersonal intelligence (“self smart”), Linguistic intelligence (“word smart”), Logical-mathematical intelligence (“number/reasoning smart”), Musical intelligence (“music smart”), Naturalist intelligence (“nature smart”), Spatial intelligence (“picture smart”). Research conducted by Gardner and his colleagues suggests that children as young as 5 years of age exhibit distinctive profiles of strength and weakness on the various types of intelligence. (Gardner & Hatch 1989) These findings are very important for English teachers of young learners. Firstly, it confirms that learning style preference is developed at a very early developmental stage. Since individual intelligences can be improved with time and effort (irrespective of innate aptitude) (Gardner & Hatch 1989) older learners, such as adolescents or adults, may have developed weak intelligence profiles to a satisfactory level in order to be able to cope within the traditional educational system. However, young learners, especially those in group 1 (5 – 9 years of age), are particularly vulnerable as they have not had the time to develop any intelligences that they are naturally weak in and are only able to rely on their innate aptitude for each type of intelligence. Secondly, as teachers of language it can be expected that children with an innate strength on the linguistic intelligence would excel in our subject area; but also, that all children can develop and improve the linguistic intelligence, regardless of innate aptitude. The question then is: How can English teachers of young learners, particularly those in group 1 (ages 5 – 9,) apply the theory of Multiple Intelligences in the classroom in order to help each student maximize their potential to learn the English language? To gain an understanding of each child’s strength and weakness profiles, as well as the overall class profile the teacher should administer a Multiple Intelligences test. Depending on the age and development of the children, the disposition of the employer or school district, and available time and resources the teacher can administer The Connell Multiple Intelligence Questionnaire for Children, which can be translated into their native language if necessary. Just like a diagnostic test, The Connell Questionnaire can provide the teacher with vital information for the syllabus design. Based on the data collected, the teacher can utilize differentiation in activities to suit the different intelligences. Additionally, the teacher can organize students in varying types of groups for varying activities. For some activities, the teacher can sperate students based on their main intelligence and assign different activities that teach the language point to each group by exploiting their dominant intelligence. Alternatively, the teacher can create groups in which there is at least one student with a dominant linguistic intelligence and that student can act as a group leader to help students with other dominant intelligences develop their linguistic intelligence. Finally, the teacher can assign homework to students that is designed to exploit their dominant intelligence for the use of language learning. Undoubtedly, modifying English language lesson plans to fit eight different intelligence profiles can be a lot of work for the teacher. Therefore, recommendations for the teaching of languages to young learners have stressed the importance of multi-modal teaching methodology (Edelenbos, Johnstone and Kubanek 2006). Multimodality refers to a teaching method that is not only constructed and transmitted through language but also through the other modes – image, gesture, movement, music, and sound. In this way, the teacher can present the language point in a format that exploits an array of dominant intelligence profiles and therefore maximizes the learning for the group. Research suggests Multiple Intelligences teaching methodology results in greater language acquisition by young learners than traditional grammar translation teaching methodology (Ghamrawi 2014). Furthermore, groups of young learners exhibit greater participation when engaged with multimodal learning material (Kaminski 2019). The students’ willingness for repetitive participation with multimodal learning material provided an opportunity for repeated practice of phonological, lexical and syntactical representations of English language, which at a later stage can be recycled as genuine statements in new contexts. Although teaching with Multiple Intelligences in mind can increase the workload for the teacher, research suggests that the learners greatly benefit from the effort. “Albert Einstein Biography” Encyclopedia of World Biography. Advameg 2019. Available at https://www.notablebiographies.com/Du-Fi/Einstein-Albert.html#ixzz5uJWJmDVg (Accessed on July 21, 2019) Edelenbos, P., R. Johnstone, and A. Kubanek. (2006). The Main Pedagogical Principles Underlying the Teaching of Languages to Very Young Learners. Languages for the Children of Europe. Published Research, Good Practice & Main Principle. Available at http://ec.europa.eu/assets/eac/languages/policy/language-policy/documents/young_en.pdf (Accessed on July 22, 2019) Gardner, H., & Hatch, T. (1989). Educational Implications of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Educational Researcher, 18(8), 4-10. Ghamrawi, N. (2014). Multiple Intelligences and ESL Teaching and Learning. Journal of Advanced Academics, 25(1), 25-46. Kaminski, A. (2019). Young learners’ engagement with multimodal texts. ELT Journal, 73(2).