Teach English in Shadun Zhen - Linyi Shi

Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences is that there are seven distinct intelligences rather than one dominant “book smart” intelligence that can be commonly associated with “smart” people. His theory goes on to say that everyone has all seven bits of intelligence but each individual has a specific make-up of those bits of intelligence where some are more stronger felt than others. The seven are visual-spatial, where you are aware of your environments and imagery, bodily-kinesthetic, where you have good body awareness and learn from movement and physical activity, musical, where you are sensitive to rhythm and sounds, interpersonal, where you learn from interacting with others, intrapersonal, where you learn from your own independent discoveries, linguistic, where you learn from words, poetry, and stories, and logical-mathematical, where you think conceptually, abstractly, and can see patterns and relationships. In this sense, Gardner’s theory assigns the descriptor “smart” to a broader range of students. One of the aspects this course focuses on is that a learning environment, a teacher, and a mindset for growth enables learning for students. The way in which you teach students, rather than the material you teach students, really can show how smart a student becomes and can actually help them better learn the material in the long run. Dr. Gardner argued that schools primarily focus on linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. His theory encourages educators to learn to focus attention on the other intelligences too. This push could help students who are musically intelligent to learn vocabulary better from songs or for students that are spatially intelligent to learn vocabulary better through pictures. Using a straight arrow ESA framework like ITTT courses emphasize, there are many ways to use multiple intelligences in an English language learning classroom. In the Engage phase of a lesson, the games, stories, pictures, and music can rotate so they appeal to the multiple intelligences, giving each student a chance to push themselves and be at their best. To be more inclusive, this could include acting and then describing the act in English, silent and group activities and stories with pictures attached. In the study phase of the lesson, the pronunciation eliciting, spelling, gap-fills and worksheets could be based on pictures, songs, videos, or games where everyone is up and out of their chairs. It could include studying in pairs or individually. Diversifying the methods of studying could help students better absorb the new material for the lesson. The activate stage of a straight arrow ESA framework is most easily adaptable for multiple intelligences because it allows students to be creative and apply their new lesson or language. Students could even be assigned to do something for five minutes that applies their learning. They could choose what kind of intelligence they want to utilize for the project. The debates, role-play, mill-drills, story building, and other communicative games, as well as intrapersonal activities like writing a story, when rotated around, can all help towards addressing all students as learners. The reason that all of the multiple intelligences are not regularly distributed into classrooms is that appealing to all the student’s learning strengths takes a lot of behind the scenes work for a teacher. It requires planning lessons from multiple angles and creating extra material. With all the work that teachers already have to do, this can be a demanding task. However, by making teachers aware of the multiple intelligences, to identify all students as smart, and getting them to think about alternate solutions to linguistic and logical/mathematical thinking, more students will be able to succeed in TEFL classrooms around the world.