Multiple Intelligences and Language Learning Strategies: Mental Choices and Preferred Strategies in Learning English as Second Language

Abstract

Exploring mental choices and preferred language learning strategies of ESL learners can help language teachers to recognize their strengths and weaknesses. After knowing the preferences of the learners in learning English, Language teachers can reconsider or re-strategize their techniques, methods, and approaches for better proficiency and promising results. The current study aims at exploring the mental choices and preferred strategies of the learners in learning English as a second language in Pakistan. Base don convenient sampling, a sample of four hundred participants was selected from all four provinces of the country. The learners were surveyed through questionnaires. In response to the questionnaire on multiple intelligence, the respondents showed their mental inclinations towards musical, picture smart, and people smart intelligence. The researchers, keeping mental choices to multiple intelligence in mind, concluded that the learners could learn best if taught in rhyme, with pictorial demonstrations, and in group activities. The respondents, while responding to the Strategy Inventory of Language Learning (SILL), showed their preferences for Mnemonic (Memory), compensation, and effective strategies. The study rounded off with the suggestion that the teachers should give attention to every individual learner in the classroom.