In the fourth installment of Herbert Puchta’s series on develop thinking skills, he considers a second model of thinking skills: Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences – and explores how this can be used in the classroom.
Through his pioneering research into human intelligence, Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University, has clearly shown that there is no such thing as a single unitary mental capability that can be called intelligence, but that there are instead multiple intelligences (MI). He argues very convincingly that IQ tests and schooling in general usually assess just two of the human intelligences, the linguistic and the logical- mathematical. Gardner, however, proposes eight different intelligences, accounting for a much broader spectrum of human capabilities that our thinking skills draw on:
- Intra-personal: self-smart
- Inter-personal: people-smart
- Logical-mathematical: maths-smart
- Linguistic: language-smart
- Musical-rhythmic: music-smart
- Visual-spatial: picture-smart
- Kinaesthetic-bodily: body-smart
- Naturalistic: nature-smart
MI in the ELT classroom
One could argue, of course, that EFL primary classrooms have, to a certain extent, always been MI ones. However, we need to be careful not to mix up multi-sensory teaching with MI teaching. In other words, using pictures in the foreign language class is not necessarily about teaching from the visual-spatial intelligence any more than singing a song with the children will automatically activate their musical-rhythmic intelligence. As Gardner said in an interview (Edutopia 1997):
‘I remember seeing a movie about multiple intelligences and there were kids crawling on the floor and the legend said ‘bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence’. I said, ‘That’s not bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence, that’s kids crawling on the floor. This is making me crawl up the wall! […] to have kids crawl or exercise their vocal cords, that’s not intelligence.’
In the same interview, Gardner stresses the importance of deciding what our educational goals are, and – once we have determined what they are – considering how we can help our children achieve them better. The concept of MI cannot itself be a goal any more than singing a song, using pictures, getting learners to move around the classroom, etc. – but it can help us achieve our goals better. If my goal is, for example, to revise a lexical set with a beginners’ class of six-year-olds, I can do this in various ways. Below is one suggestion that you might want to try; it is based on MI thinking and while it is an interesting and highly motivating activity for those kids whose mathematical-logical intelligence is in good condition, it is in fact useful for all your learners since it helps develop important thinking skills at the same time as working to accomplish your goals.
An example – lexical revision through logical sequences
Let’s assume the words you want to revise are butterfly, frog, flower, bee, tree, ladybird and sun. Draw logical sequences, as below, of the words you want to revise on the board or give each learner a photocopy of them.
Read the first row out together with the learners rhythmically:
butterfly – frog – butterfly – frog – butterfly – frog
Elicit the missing word (butterfly) and ask them to complete the row by drawing a picture of the missing word. Give them a few minutes to complete the other rows. If they cannot complete the patterns, get them to talk to at least three other children about their solutions and why they have come up with them. These discussions will naturally happen in the children’s mother tongue. When they have finished, ask two children to read out the solutions to the class so that they can all check.
Ask them to put numbers against the rows: 1 against the top row, 2 against the one underneath and 3 against the bottom row. They then put their worksheets on their desks face down. Ask a learner to read out any one of the three rows. When they have finished, the others turn over their worksheet and say which number they believe the row was. Repeat the activity several times. Then challenge learners to see if they can tell which of the rows has been read out without looking at the worksheet. Give them about a minute to look at the worksheet and try to memorise the rows before they put it face down on the desk again.
Next, hand out a paper strip with a copy of three empty rows to each child and ask them to create their own logical sequences, using any of the words they know in English that can easily be drawn. (Alternatively and with slightly higher level classes, learners could also write the words.) Tell them to leave one or two frames free in each row. Collect all the paper strips in, and repeat the activity using the children’s own logical sequences.
Developing cognitive processes
When you regularly use activities like this in your class, you will notice that children gain confidence in finding out how a task works. If guided properly, they will develop an attitude that can best be summed up with what one child in an MI classroom said, ‘Ah. That’s not easy. I need to think first!’ At the same time, there is a clear language gain – in this case, revision of a lexical set. But there is more to it. If you work on children’s thinking skills on a regular basis, the development of their thinking skills will also enhance cognitive resources that support the child’s language learning.
To return to the example activity, we can say that in order to understand patterns the logical-mathematical competencies are needed. So what we are developing through this simple activity is a basic skill that is going to be called into action again later on, when the child is required to understand the patterns of language. Any metalinguistic task that learners might be asked to engage with later in their language learning process is likely to require this and other basic cognitive skills, e.g. noticing patterns, drawing conclusions, hypothesising and verifying one’s hypotheses. These cognitive processes are needed later in the language learning process. An example is the type of task that asks learners to notice grammar phenomena and try to come up with rules describing them. To do this, learners need to do exactly what has been described above – i.e. noticing linguistic patterns, and trying to fi the rules that govern them by making hypotheses and verifying or disproving the rules they have come up with.
Read the other posts in this series:
Developing young learners’ thinking skills #1 – developing and applying thinking skills
Developing young learners’ thinking skills #2 – Thinking skills: Model 1
Developing young learners’ thinking skills #3 – Story thinking
Developing young learners’ thinking skills #5 – Combining the teaching of thinking and language