Multiple intelligences Search articles

Submitted by TE Editor on 14 February, 2005 - 13:00 Top of Form

Enter your
Have you ever thought about why your students react in different keywords:
ways to the activities you do in the class? Or even why different
groups react differently to the same activity? Why do some students
really enjoy working in groups whilst others are much more
articles
productive working alone? Why do some learners draw pictures in
their vocabulary books while others seem to need to just hear a word
to be able to use it themselves? Search

• Types of intelligence
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• Finding your strengths
• In the classroom articles_search_f
• Linking learners to activity types
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• Conclusion
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Types of intelligence Username: *
American psychologist, Howard Gardner developed a theory of
Multiple Intelligences (1983) which can go some way towards
explaining different learner styles. According to Gardner there are
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eight different types of intelligences.

The eight intelligences are:

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• Linguistic - The word player
• Logical / Mathematical - The questioner
• Create new
• Visual / Spatial - The visualiser account
• Musical - The music lover • Request new
• Bodily / Kinaesthetic - The mover password
• Interpersonal - The socialiser form-e5b8288942

• Intrapersonal - The loner

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• Naturalistic - The nature lover (added by Gardner at a later
date) Bottom of Form

Finding your strengths

Everyone has some of each of all the intelligences, but in different Editor's links
people one (or more) is more pronounced. There are questionnaires • Multiple
that help you to work out which of the intelligences is the most intelligences:
prominent one. What are
• If you are interested to find out your own there are several you good at?
websites and you or your students can do the test online. In
my opinion, one of the best ones is: Tags in articles
http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ accent Articles
ict/multipl... audio connected
speech diphthongs
The test takes five minutes to complete and then provides you EIL elision global
 with a pie chart to show how your intelligence types are English integrating
distributed. pronunciation
intonation intrusion
linking phonemes
In the classroom phonemic chart
Now you may be wondering what all this has got to do with your phonemic symbols
classes, well, although not impossible, it would be quite a real poetry
undertaking to give all your students a test to see which of the Pronunciation
intelligences is most prominent, and then tailor-make each of your pronunciation
classes to suit every individual student! rhythm schwa
• If you want to go some way towards achieving this and it is a sentences stress
viable option for you there are some examples of tests in Jane sentence stress
Revell and Susan Norman's books 'In your hands' and speaking vowel
'Handing Over' (Saffire press). sounds weak forms
word stress
• If time, or other factors make it impossible to do individual
tests for your students, you could just try to make sure that
you vary the tasks and use a range of activities so that you
Follow
touch upon all the types of intelligences now and again.
TeachingEnglish
• By observing your students and making notes on how they
react to different activities you may well discover, for
example, that you have a class with a majority of visual
learners so you may try to use more flash cards or improve
your board work.

Linking learners to activity types

Below is a table of learner types and some suggested activities for
each type. It is adapted from Jeremy Harmer's book The Practice of
English Language Teaching but was originally taken from 'How to
use Gardner's intelligences in a class program' by M Loon for the
University of Canberra.
Cambridge
Learns
Learner type Is good at Activities Dictionaries Online
best by
Saying, Top of Form
Reading, hearing Memory games
Linguistic writing and and Trivia quizzes
stories seeing Stories.
Look it up!
words
Asking
form-fbaeac98c1
Solving question
puzzles, s,
Logical / exploring categori Puzzles bc_dicsearch_bo
mathematical patterns, sing and Problem solving.
reasoning and working Bottom of Form

logic with
patterns
Visual / Drawing, Visualis Flashcards
Spatial building, arts ing, Colours
and crafts using Pictures
the Drawing
 mind's
Project work.
eye
Singing, Using
listening to rhythm, Using songs
Musical music and with Chants
playing music Drilling.
instruments on
Moving
TPR activities
around, Moving,
Action songs
Bodily / touching touchin
Running dictations
Kinaesthetic things and g and
Miming
body doing
Realia.
language
Co-
Mixing with
operatin
others,
g, Mingle activities
leading
working Group work
Interpersonal groups,
in Debates
understanding
groups Discussions.
others and
and
mediating
sharing
Working
alone and Workin Working individually on
Intrapersonal
pursuing own g alone personalised projects
interests
Workin
g
outside
Naturalistic Nature Environmental projects.
and
observin
g nature

Conclusion
Although you can't please all the students all the time, it's just good to
bear in mind that there are many different ways of learning.
• If you try an activity with one group and it falls flat, it may
well be worth trying it again as it may work really well with
another set of students.
• If you can identify the loner of the class or the one who is
always up and out of his seat, try and put activities into your
lesson plan that you think will suit them from time to time.
• Finding out my own intelligence type has helped me to better
understand how I learn. I now sit in my Catalan class and as
we get told to copy lists of random vocabulary off the board I
think to myself, 'This won't work for me - I don't learn like
this. I need to see some pictures of these things, I'm a visual
learner!
Further reading
The Practice of English Language Teaching by Jeremy Harmer
How to use Gardner's intelligences in a class program by M Loon
http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/mult
ipl... This site gives a clear introduction to MI theory from the
Birmingham Grid For Learning group.
Jo Budden, British Council, Barcelona
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Comments

georginahudson
Multiple intelligences
Submitted on 27 April, 2010 - 21:22
Jo, thank you for such a thorough explanation about multiple
intelligences.
I particularly like the bit about "finding out about my own
intelligence".
The ones like us who are interested in multiple intelligences, NLP,
etc., sometimes are so concentrated on our learners' learning styles
and strategies that we fail to find out about ours to better understand
the process of learning.
I'll put into practice your advice.
Thank you!
www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/georginahudson
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jvl narasimha rao

Constructivism and language acqisition
Submitted on 29 April, 2010 - 05:47
Dear Jo Budden, You have really created a extremely useful blog for
the English language teachers. Multiple intelligences and
constructivism are almost synonymous because these days child is
considered the creator of knowledge or language. An english teacher
should be aware of the multiple intelligences among his/her students
and design tasks to cater to the needs of all the students. Thanks a lot
for your highly informative and educative blog.
yours sincerely,
JVL NARASIMHA RAO
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