An Investigation Study on the Relationship between English Language Students' Multiple Inteligences and Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences theory helped teachers, educators, parents and students understand the importance of catering for individual differences in terms of learning styles. This present research tries to explore the relationship between the students' multiple intelligences and their reading comprehension. The researcher started by trying to identify the students' multiple intelligence profiles of fifty two English major students by using a reliable McKenzie's (1999) MI profiling survey to sort out the students' dominant intelligences. Moreover, all participants were asked to answer a TOEFL (2007) reading comprehension test to assess their reading ability. Results of the correlation analysis showed that there is a significant relationship between the MI profiles and the reading ability.The multiple regression analysis identified the naturalstic intelligence and the interpersonal intelligence as the predictors of the reading ability scores.