Teach English in Yongfeng Zhen - Yancheng Shi

According to the definition given by the psychologist David Wechster, intelligence is “the aggregate or global capacity of the individiual to act purposefully, to think rationally and to deal effectively with the environment”. As we know, everyone and so every child (should) react in front of a stimulus, faster or slower, and many theories have been postulated to explain this topic. The first one appeared in the XX century thanks to Spearman, claiming that intelligence can be measured numerically; after same time, Thurstone formulated his theory based on seven primary mental abilities. Both of them underlined the link among intelligence, numerical expressions and test's scores. Deviating from this current, in 1983 Howard Gardner published his research "Frame of Mind", in which he presented his Multiple Intelligences’ theory: for the very first time, the link between analysis of test scores and intelligence got abandoned, thanks to the adoption of an interdisciplinary point of view that reflects on brain organization. Gardner stated and demonstrated that a child with a predominant kind of intelligence absorbs knowledge in a higher level when the teaching is based upon his personal way to process information; here, the accent is put on the way a child elaborates and processes knowledge, rather than the way and capacity of learning (two concepts completely divergent). In a nutshell, for the maximum outcome, the teaching practice should be conformed to the students-object of the teaching itself, and it means to every single student, taking into account all their differences regarding the absorption of the subjects taught. As support and foundation of this idea, Gardner’s innovation postulated the existence of nine abilities or skills: Visual-spatial intelligence. Young learners characterized by this ability are way stronger when they can elaborate knowledge adopting a visual method: it means, they better process info when the lesson concerns visual aids. As samples, we can mentione everything related to the visual sense, such as flashcards, picturecards, paintings, drawing, colours and so on. Logical-mathematical intelligence. Logical children are more confident and skillful when coping with maths and logic exercises; they do not involve just numbers but even the sense of space, geometry, statistics, etc. Linguistic-verbal intelligence. Being characterized by this skill, learners will find easier and more stimulting absorbing new information by talking, from the teachers and themselves too. The voice and the language acquire the core of the teaching process. Interpersonal intelligence. This ability conveys the inter-personal context: when this is predominant, learners would rather learn by sharing and comparing all the knowledge they have in front, and so working with others. Intrapersonal intelligence. Children characterized by this skill are more likely to learn by themselves; it means their brain is more active when working alone, analyzing, processing and organizing all the new information by its own, with its personal time, pace and space. Naturalistic intelligence. This ability concerns the great deal to absorb knowlegde by practical things in connection with nature: we are talking about subjects as biology, science, but also teaching approaches directly linked to the natural field, as open-air trips. Auditory intelligence. Auditory-smart children better assimilate information when they have the possibility to listen to it; usually, music plays a central role during auditory-centered lessons. Kinesthetic intelligence. This ability is highly related to the movement of the body and the skill to learn just starting from it: every activity concerning body movements, as dance, manipulation, creation using the hands goes into this category. Existential intelligence. This skill is linked to the inner part of learners, they who are capable to process knowledge by matters that involve the existential sphere, like spirituality. We are talking about a quite rare ability, not so easy to find in young learners beacause of its nature itself; that is why, when reffering to Multiple Intelligences, we mention the eight ones. Taking into account the Gardner's concept of Multiple Intelligences, as teachers we have the power and the duty to provide lessons incorporating some of these abilities as the learners are characterized the most. For istance, having a class in which all the 8 types of intelligence are present, we should develop a lesson capable to consider all of them, without leaving someone behind. Obviously, operating this seems to be extremely hard: the point is including all the intelligences (and so the children) as much as we can. As sample, we can suppose a lesson based on auditory, kinesthetic, intrapersonal and interpersonal abilities: the teaching should focus on a specific subject using music and dance (as a song), and as activies we can introduce one intrapersonal, to be solved one by one, and the other interpersonal, to be developed in pairs or groups. We must remember a very easy concept: we cannot test and judge different animals (elephant, monkey, fish, dog) by their ability to climb a tree, not because the operation of judging is impossible but because it is intrinsically not fair. Gardner tought us there is something wrong with the words "intelligence", "smart", basically a Western's legacy: everybody and every child has got one or more skills that make a person smart in a unique way and we, as teacher, need to discover and promote every kind of intelligence. Bibliography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences https://tecweb.org/styles/gardner.html https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/clip-save-checklist-learning-activities-connect-multiple-intelligences/ https://www.verywellmind.com/gardners-theory-of-multiple-intelligences-2795161 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N2pnYne0ZA