The weekly column

Article 3, March 2000

Editor's note: This week's article is the first in a series by Michael Berman about implementing the Multiple Intelligences theory in the classroom. In his writings such as Frames of Mind : The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardner defines 7 intelligence types: interpersonal, intrapersonal, logical/mathematical, spatial, musical, kinesthetic and linguistic. Most learners favour different intelligence types, and by using materials suitable for different learning styles the teacher can help their students make more rapid progress.

by Michael Berman

Howard Gardner defines Interpersonal intelligence as a person’s capacity to understand the intentions, motivations, and desires of other people and, consequently, to work effectively with others.

Games which require teamwork for a successful outcome are an ideal way of catering for the Interpersonal Intelligence type. Examples of suitable activities include the ubiquitous Balloon Debate and the Desert Island Consensus Game. Questionnaires and mock collaborative exercises which require empathy can also be effective tools.

Collective dialogue-writing is another way of providing an opportunity to cater for interpersonal intelligence. The following set of activities was designed for an advanced level class to improve their mastery of the use of the articles by focusing on fixed expressions with the zero article, with the indefinite article, and with the definite article:

Go through the fixed expressions with the class, column by column, to make sure they are understood. Arrange the students in pairs or groups. Ask them to select five of the expressions and incorporate them into a dialogue. Then invite the students to act out their dialogues for the rest of the class:

What Do You Love Being? can be used for pair work or played as a team game to provide practice in the Present Simple to describe regular activities. Two examples of clues and answers are presented below:

People stroke me and give me milk to drink. They let me sit on their laps. I sleep whenever I like and I don’t have to work. What do I love being? You love being a cat!

Now think of something you love being. Write three sentences describing things you do on a regular basis. Exchange the information with the person sitting next to you and see if you can guess who or what they are!

 

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MAKING USE OF QUESTIONNAIRES

Questionnaires appeal to the Interpersonal Intelligence type as they can involve the learners working in groups together. After pre-teaching new vocabulary, arrange the students in groups. Hand out a copy of the questionnaire to an "interviewer" in each group who reads the questions to the other students and takes on the role of the teacher. Only the interviewer should be able to see the copy and he/she presents the questionnaire to the group as a listening activity. Meanwhile, you can circulate to provide any assistance required. The next stage is for the students to add up their scores and assess the results, which can be examined and discussed by the class as a whole. Although the material is inauthentic in that the questionnaires are contrived, the students have an authentic reason for doing the activity - to find out more about themselves:

 

HOW ASSERTIVE ARE YOU?

1. How often do you upset people because of what you say or do?

a. often b. sometimes c. never

2. When was the last time you hit somebody?

a. within the last month b. within the last year c. more than a year ago

3. How often do you shout at your partner to get your own way?

a. often b. sometimes c. never

4. How do you react if others are hurt by things you say?

a. feel guilty for a long time afterwards b. tell yourself to be more careful next time c. forget about it

5. Have you ever made a colleague cry as a result of things you have said?

a. more than once b. only once c. never

6. Do you find it difficult to trust people?

a. never b. sometimes c. often

7. Have you ever been in trouble for acts of bullying or physical violence?

a. yes b. no

8. How often do you lose your temper with waiters, bus drivers, shop assistants?

a. often b. sometimes c. never

9. How do you behave when you feel passionately about an issue?

a. try to impose your ideas on others b. lose your temper c. accept that others may not feel the same way

10.Do you hate losing arguments?

a. yes b. no

11.How often do you lose control completely when you get angry?

a. often b. sometimes c. never

12.Do other people ever seem scared to give you their opinions?

a. often b. sometimes c. never

 

ANSWERS

1. a-2 b-0 c-1 7. a-2 b-0

2. a-2 b-1 c-0 8. a-2 b-1 c-0

3. a-2 b-1 c-0 9. a-1 b-2 c-0

4. a-0 b-1 c-2 10.a-2 b-0

5. a-2 b-1 c-0 11.a-2 b-1 c-0

6. a-0 b-1 c-2 12.a-2 b-1 c-0

 

WHAT YOUR SCORE MEANS

0 - 6 Join an assertiveness class where you can learn to take charge more and how to stop people exploiting you.

7 -12 You're nicely assertive and know what you want.

13-18 Don't be so pushy! Your need to be in control all the time is the result of your basic insecurity.

19-24 You're a relentless persecutor of the weak and vulnerable. In fact, you're a bit of a monster!

 

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ARE YOU RULED BY YOUR HEART OR YOUR HEAD?

1. What would you rather be known as?

a. a sympathetic person b. an intelligent person

2. Which qualities do you value in a friend?

a. support and love b. common sense and practical advice

3. When can you tell you're in love?

a. when you realise someone has the qualities you're looking for b. when you heart beats faster and you go weak at the knees

4. Which bits do you like best when reading a newspaper?

a. the news and the crossword b. romantic short stories and the agony aunt page

5. What do you believe we should teach children?

a. how to listen to other people b. how to win arguments

6. What's your favourite kind of music?

a. poetic and intellectual b. sentimental and romantic

7. What sort of books do you prefer reading?

a. detective whodunnits b. historic romances

8. What would your ideal job be?

a. a lawyer or a politician b. a nurse or a musician

9. How do you judge a person's character?

a. by following your feelings b. by analysing the way they behave

10. What are you more likely to do if you know telling the truth will hurt someone's feelings?

a. tell a white lie b. be brutally honest

 

ANSWERS

1. a-1 b-2 6. a-1 b-2

2. a-1 b-2 7. a-2 b-1

3. a-2 b-1 8. a-2 b-1

4. a-2 b-1 9. a-1 b-2

5. a-1 b-2 10. a-1 b-2

WHAT YOUR SCORE MEANS:

15-20 You're an analytical kind of person with strong principles and insist on being treated fairly. However, you have a tendency to hurt other people by being thoughtless and you should listen to your feelings more often.

10-14 You need praise and love. You're a good listener and like to please other people. But sometimes you're too passionate for your own good and act without thinking first. Try to introduce an element of balance into your decision-making.

 

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WHAT KIND OF CANDIDATE ARE YOU AT INTERVIEWS?

1. Why did you leave your last job?

a. I wasn’t learning enough and I was looking for a new challenge
b. I’ve never had a job.
c. At a spiritual level I’m still doing that job and all jobs before it
d. My references caught up with me.

2. How would you rate your team playing skills?

a. I would get the rest of the team to rate them for me
b. I don’t usually get picked for teams
c. All humankind are my brothers and sisters and we are all one blood
d. Better than all those other bastards

3. Who are your referees?

a. The Governor of the Bank of England, the Bishop of York, Prince Charles
b. Kevin, a mate from school
c. The 6^th century Welsh Druid Ormenrod and the Cherokee Medicine Man Squatting Bison
d. My judge, probation officer, and psychologist

4. What would you say your weaknesses are?

a. An obsessive drive for perfection and total loyalty to whoever I work for
b. Character and bladder
c. You’re projecting your own weaknesses on me. I can help heal you.
d. Do you really think I’m going to tell you? I’m not stupid.

5. What are your interests outside work?

a. Charity work with the homeless and self-improvement courses
b. Playing darts
c. Tapping into the karmic consciousness, out of body experiences, and tree hugging
d. Tattooing the last 10 per cent of my body

6. What kind of company do you want to work for?

a. One that is internally engineered to pivot on the point of its consumer interface
b. Anything really. Indoors would be nice
c. One that vibrates on the same frequency as the cosmos itself
d. The sort that gives you a company car, secretary, pension, bonus, and six weeks’ holiday

7. What your greatest personal achievement in life so far?

a. Saving someone’s life by donating one of kidneys and then re-engineering the hospital administration
b. Winning a beer drinking competition
c. Understanding that we are all dust, all effort is vanity and all business futility
d. Bench pressing 200lb with one arm

8. What are your computer skills?

a. I can rebuild a client server blindfolded
b. I have high scores in three amusement arcades near where I live
c. Within us we all have all skills. My computer skills are perfect but latent.
d. I can carry a top of the range PC and laser printer from a building in under a minute

9. In your opinion, what is the secret of customer service?

a. Whatever you’d like the answer to be
b. Nobody tells me any secrets
c. Keep no secrets from the customer – that is the real secret
d. Respect. They’ve got to respect you or they get nothing

10. Finally, do you have any questions for us?

a. Why are you all so talented, charming and good looking?
b. Do you know of any other jobs round here?
c. Does your work enrich you spiritually and enlarge your consciousness?
d. Have I got the job and can I have an advance on my pay?

 

CHECK YOUR ANSWERS

Mostly As: Although you have the perfect interview technique, nobody will employ you because you’re just too good to be true. You’re a know-all, which is why nobody likes you and why you lost your last job as well.

Mostly Bs: The only reason you attend interviews is because you would lose your benefit if you didn’t. You have the vision, drive and personality of a hubcap. Be careful you don’t get offered a job in the accounts department.

Mostly Cs: Your last job interview was probably twenty five years ago. Things have moved on since then, except in marketing, where you probably have a bright future. But be prepared to meet some really weird people.

Mostly Ds: Your forthright opinions, rugged individuality and great sense of humour have you marked down for a job in sales. The double glazing or loan sharking industries will welcome you with open arms.

 

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INFORMATION GAP ACTIVITIES

Information Gap activities can be used for both pair and group work and these can be based on articles, or on pictures. If you are familiar with the Interview papers of the Cambridge FCE and CAE exams, you will know that pictures are used for this purpose. Two different versions of the text/picture are prepared – A and B. Pair the A students with the B students. Then they take it in turns to question each other to find the missing information. The role of the teacher is kept to a minimum, thereby maximizing student involvement. The activity reveals the difficulty many learners have in the formation of questions and can provide an opportunity for remedial work – how the structure of the question changes according to whether the question word is the subject or the object of the sentence. This can be illustrated by using the questions who loves you? and who do you love? Two examples of Information Gap activities designed for Intermediate level learners are presented below:

 

EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE SUN (VERSION A)

The Sun is the centre of our solar system. It’s the star that the Earth spins around and it provides light and heat. It rises in the east and sets in the west and its rays are the most powerful at midday.

It takes ……………………………………. for the Earth to get round the Sun. Our calendar compensates by having leap years – an extra day every four years. Before they were introduced in 1752, the calendar had slipped 11 days, so the solstice took place on June 10.

The Sun measures 875,000 miles across. It could contain …………………………………………….…………………..

The Sun is 4,600 million years old and is a quarter of a million times closer to us than the next known star.

An eclipse occurs when ………………………………………………………………….………….

The ozone layer is a layer of air high above the Earth, which prevents harmful ultraviolet light from the sun from reaching the Earth. The hole in the ozone layer, which appeared over Antarctica in the 1980s, has led to ………………………………………………...

The midsummer solstice, meaning "the standing still of the sun", traditionally occurs on June 21 but can happen on the 22^nd, as it did most recently in 1979, or on the 20^th, which it will do in 2012.

The first rays of light on midsummer morning will have taken …………………. to travel the 93 million miles from the sun.

The Druids celebrate the summer solstice at Stonehenge. The major axis of Stonehenge was carefully aligned with the midwinter and midsummer sun. There are other alignments too, such as with the rising and setting of the moon, and all these suggest that Stonehenge was originally built for ceremonies to mark the annual calendar and seasons. Stonehenge is just one of hundreds of similar stone megaliths in Britain. And our forbears were not alone – ……………………………………………………. also built "archeo-astronomical" structures.

Midsummer is traditionally a favourite time of the year for fairies to appear. According to folklore, if you want to see them you must …………………………………………………………...

A sundial is a device which consists of a thin piece of metal fixed to a flat surface marked with numbers, which shows the time by the metal making a dark line on the surface as the sun moves across the sky above it.

"The Sun Also Rises" is the title of a book by ………………….. , "Here Comes The Sun" is the title of a song by the Beatles, and there is also a famous painting by Van Gogh called "Sunflowers" A sunflower is a plant usually having a very tall stem and a single large round flat yellow flower, with many thin narrow petals close together.

 

EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE SUN (VERSION B)

The Sun is the centre of our solar system. It’s the star that the Earth spins around and it provides light and heat. It rises in the east and sets in the west and its rays are the most powerful at midday

It takes 365 days, five hours and 50 minutes for the Earth to get round the Sun. Our calendar compensates by having leap years – an extra day every four years. Before they were introduced in 1752, …………………………………………………………………………...

The Sun measures 875,000 miles across. It could contain more than a million planets the size of Earth.

The Sun is 4,600 million years old and is …………………………………… than the next known star.

An eclipse occurs when the sun disappears completely or partly from view while the moon is moving between it and the earth.

The ozone layer is a layer of air high above the Earth, which prevents ………………………………. ……………………………. The hole in the ozone layer, which appeared over Antarctica in the 1980s, has led to an increase in the incidences of skin cancer.

The midsummer solstice, meaning …………………………….. , traditionally occurs on June 21 but can happen on the 22^nd, as it did most recently in 1979, or on the 20^th, which it will do in 2012.

The first rays of light on midsummer morning will have taken eight-and-a-half minutes to travel the 93 million miles from the sun.

The Druids celebrate the summer solstice at Stonehenge. The major axis of Stonehenge was carefully aligned with ……………………………………... There are other alignments too, such as with the rising and setting of the moon, and all these suggest that Stonehenge was originally built for ceremonies to mark the annual calendar and seasons. Stonehenge is just one of hundreds of similar stone megaliths in Britain. And our forbears were not alone – Egyptian, Greek, Mayan and South Pacific civilisations also built "archeo-astronomical" structures.

Midsummer is traditionally a favourite time of the year for ………………. According to folklore, if you want to see them you must rub fern seeds on your eyelids at the stroke of midnight.

A sundial is a device which consists of a thin piece of metal fixed to a flat surface marked with numbers, which shows the time by ……………………………………………………………………………

"The Sun Also Rises" is the title of a book by Ernest Hemingway, "Here Comes The Sun" is the title of a song by the Beatles, and there is also a famous painting by …………….. called "Sunflowers" A sunflower is a plant usually having a very tall stem and a single large round flat yellow flower, with many thin narrow petals close together.

 

EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT WATER (VERSION A)

Water is the common name applied to the liquid state of the hydrogen-oxygen compound. Pure water is ………………………………………………... However, this colour can only be detected in layers of considerable depth.

Water is the only substance that occurs at ordinary temperatures in all three states of matter – as a solid, a liquid and a gas. It covers ………………………………………….. in the form of swamps, lakes, rivers and oceans. It is also the major constituent of living matter - from 50 to 90 percent of the weight of living organisms is water.

The world’s five oceans, the main areas of sea, are the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the Arctic and the Antarctic. And the longest river is ………………………...

Hydrology is the science concerned with the distribution of water on the earth, its physical and chemical reactions with other naturally occurring substances, and its relation to life on earth.

Rain is the precipitation of liquid drops of water. ………………………………………, about 10,922 mm per year, occurs at Cherrapunji, in northeastern India, where moisture-laden air from the Bay of Bengal is forced to rise over the Khasi Hills of Assam State. A long period when there is little or no rain is known as a drought.

Clouds are a condensed form of atmospheric moisture consisting of small water droplets or tiny ice crystals and rainfall is dependent on their formation. More than 100 different kinds of clouds are distinguishable and ……………………………………………. has introduced a species of artificial clouds known as contrails. These are formed from the condensed water vapour ejected as a part of the engine exhaust gases. They say that ……………………………… to suggest that even in bad things you can always find something good.

A spa is a fashionable town where water comes out of the ground and people come to drink or lie in it because they think it will improve their health. Baden Baden in Germany and Bath in Britain are two of Europe’s famous spa towns. Spa water is thought to be good for you because of the minerals it contains, but it often tastes unpleasant.

……………….. is a method of treating people with particular diseases or injuries by making them exercise in water. It enables patients to exercise without straining their bodies and is a recommended form of treatment for arthritis.

The English generally prefer …………………. because they think it’s cleaner. In fact, the reverse is the case because in a bath you lie in dirty water. In the time of Shakespeare, it was common for people to only have one bath a year. Fortunately, habits have changed a lot since then!

They say that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink because ……………………… …………………………….. They also say blood is thicker than water to indicate the importance of family ties.

 

EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT WATER (VERSION B)

Water is the common name applied to the liquid state of the hydrogen-oxygen compound. Pure water is an odorless, tasteless liquid with a bluish tint. However, this colour can only be detected in .………………………..

Water is the only substance that occurs at ordinary temperatures in all three states of matter – as a solid, a liquid and a gas. It covers three-quarters of the surface of the earth in the form of swamps, lakes, rivers and oceans. It is also the major constituent of living matter - from 50 to 90 percent of the weight of living organisms is water.

The world’s five oceans, the main areas of sea, ……………………………………………………… ……………... And the longest river is the Mississippi-Missouri.

…………. is the science concerned with the distribution of water on the earth, its physical and chemical reactions with other naturally occurring substances, and its relation to life on earth.

Rain is the precipitation of liquid drops of water. The world’s heaviest average rainfall, about 10,922 mm per year, occurs at Cherrapunji, in northeastern India, where moisture-laden air from the Bay of Bengal is forced to rise over the Khasi Hills of Assam State. A long period when there is little or no rain is known as …………...

Clouds are a condensed form of atmospheric moisture consisting of small water droplets or tiny ice crystals and rainfall is dependent on their formation. More than 100 different kinds of clouds are distinguishable and the development of the high-altitude plane has introduced a species of artificial clouds known as contrails. These are formed from ………………………………………………… ………………………….. They say that every cloud has a silver lining to suggest that even in bad things you can always find something good.

A spa is a fashionable town where water comes out of the ground and people come to drink or lie in it because they think it will improve their health. Baden Baden in Germany and Bath in Britain are two of Europe’s famous spa towns. Spa water is thought to be good for you because ……………………. ……………., but it often tastes unpleasant.

Hydrotherapy is a method of treating people with particular diseases or injuries by making them exercise in water. It enables patients to ……………………………………….. and is a recommended form of treatment for arthritis.

The English generally prefer a bath to a shower because they think it’s cleaner. In fact, the reverse is the case because in a bath you lie in dirty water. In the time of Shakespeare, it was common for people to ……………………………. Fortunately, habits have changed a lot since then!

They say that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink because people have to learn from their own experiences. They also say …………………………….. to indicate the importance of family ties.

 

All materials © Michael Berman, 2000. To learn more about Michael Berman and his writings please click here.