Chapter one Introduction
Students’ abilities can not be fully cultivated to some extent in the course of British & American literature (B-A literature). In recent years, many domestic experts hold that B-A literature is one of the influential specialized courses for English major’s teaching and years of teaching practice shows that it has immeasurable effect on improving students’ human quality and their basic language skills, so its important position in English professional talents training should be recognized as soon as possible (Gu Hong, Du Zhiqing, 2004). Certainly, the practice of most of the B-A literature teaching reforms in China has made a breakthrough. For example, at present, many colleges and universities regard B-A literature as an excellent course. The construction of teaching team, the reform of teaching method, the construction of teaching material and the using of modern education means have decreased B-A literature course’s “marginalized” status in the English majors in colleges and universities. More and more importance is being attached to B-A literature course. While it must be admitted that there still exists a number of problems in literature course in many colleges and universities in China, which can be described as follows: knowledge-focused teaching goal, teaching method which teacher teaches and the students only listen and the final-paper-based summative evaluation way, all of which neglect the students’ abilities development to some extent. It is not uncommon that the B-A literature teacher teaches in front of the class when the students are busily taking notes without thinking by themselves. Besides, B-A literature course materials are very limited, especially the network resources, the teaching courseware, audio and video materials. As a result, the classroom teaching of B-A literature is not very encouraging and the classroom atmosphere is not very active. More importantly, students can not participate actively in the class of B-A literature which they could have done. Only when the students follow the B-A literature teacher closely can they really gain some literature knowledge from the class. In other words, students’ verbal/linguistic intelligence and logical/mathematical intelligence are emphasized, while students’ other intelligences are neglected, which leads to students’ potential strong intelligences are overlooked and they are not energetic and enthusiastic enough in learning. As a consequence, students’ interests cannot be activated, let alone the cultivation of the students’ comprehensive abilities.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Basic Principles and Viewpoints of MI Theory
Intelligence has long been a hot research topic for researchers and educators. Although numerous definitions of intelligence have been proposed, no consensus has been reached by scholars. According to “Mainstream Science on Intelligence”, an editorial statement by a group of researchers, the definition of intelligence is that “A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex
