This study was about relationships among multiple intelligences and perceptions towards English learning of elementary school students. This study was designed to learn an average of eight kinds of multiple intelligences, and gender or grade differenc...
This study was about relationships among multiple intelligences and perceptions towards English learning of elementary school students. This study was designed to learn an average of eight kinds of multiple intelligences, and gender or grade differences with the self-report measure multiple intelligences test for elementary school students who learn English. This study was also included to search the differences between gender and grade in their perception towards English learning. Moreover, this study was investigated if there is a difference of perceptions towards English learning by their intelligence strength types.
Data for this study were collected from 289 elementary school students who are learning English under the school regular curriculum from 3rd to 6th grades in Seoul through the self-report multiple intelligences test and the survey of recognitions about English learning.
The results of this study were as follows;
First, the most multiple intelligences strengths type of elementary school students in the third grade to sixth grade who are learning English is the Intrapersonal intelligence and the others are Bodily-kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Spatial, Naturalist, Logical-mathematical, Linguistic, Musical intelligence in order. In addition, the majority of elementary school students have more than average interest, attitude, experience and expectation about learning English, and especially they have the highest expectations of the ability to perform learning activities.
Second, regarding multiple intelligence strengths, there is a type difference by gender, but there is no meaningful difference by grade. The other intelligences except Bodily-kinesthetic and Logical-mathematical intelligences show significant differences by gender, and the females' intelligence scales are ahead above males' ones in all these intelligences. All female students' scores also show more dominant in the whole multiple intelligences test and this has a statistically significant effect. However, only the Logical-mathematical intelligence shows the grade level difference, except that there is no statistically significant difference in the other intelligences, when viewed overall the whole multiple intelligences types. On looking over the perceptions of English learning by genders, attitude and interest in learning English and learning experience are higher with female students, and also they recognize more positive than male students in the whole perception towards English learning. However, there is no significant grade difference in the perception towards English learning except learning experience.
Third, it turns out that the types of multiple intelligence have an effect to the perception about English learning. The Linguistic intelligence among eight types of multiple intelligences is the most impact and positive to the attitude and interest in learning English and full awareness of English learning. The Naturalist intelligence affects the attitudes and interests in learning English as well. On the other hand, learning experience and expectations of the ability to perform learning activities are not affected by any types of multiple intelligences. Moreover, the most positive intelligence to English learning is Interpersonal intelligence, and also Musical intelligence and Naturalist intelligence have the positive perception toward English learning, in case of excluding Linguistic intelligence.