Applying Multiple Intelligence Strategies on Diverse College Level Vocabulary Instruction

Abstract

Today‘s teachers have more students in their classrooms, and they learn in diverse ways. Teachers are being held accountable for their teaching, but they lack the tools to address the diversity in their classrooms and often are limited in resources. The one-size-fits-all educational model does not produce results in all students. Multiple Intelligences (MI) and Differentiated Instruction (DI) are different ways of instruction that utilize the individual needs and abilities. The main focus of this project was to determine learning styles of a university English class learning vocabulary and to develop strategies that work best for the individual differences. The sample were 30 university students that were divided into a control group(traditional instruction) and experimental group(differentiated instruction using multiple intelligences) which consisted of 15 students each. The students were of both genders and between 18-22 years old. The results lead to the belief that second language acquisition requires much longer than 8 weeks of proper differentiating in lessons. Although implementing multiple intelligences in everyday student learning process demonstrates improvement in learning, there are other factors to consider in ascertaining an effective learning environment.