The Role of Multiple Intelligences and Art-Education in performance of IELTS candidates on Reading comprehension section of IELTS Exam and their motivations.

Abstract

The arts improve our lives, enhance our sense of aesthetics, and can be a precious instrument for language educators and for language learners in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. This study evaluated the role of Multiple intelligences and Art-education in International English Language Testing System (IELTS) candidates' performance in the reading section of IELTS exam and their motivations. The researcher designed the visual Artistic Reading tasks for IELTS reading skills according to Armstrong's (2009) definitions of visual artistic tasks for reading skills, including a) visual artistic tasks for vocabulary learning and b) visual artistic tasks for IELTS reading comprehension skills. 54 IELTS candidates who attended an IELTS reading classroom in an English institute participated in this study. The experimental group (N=27) implemented an arteducation program for learning IELTS reading skills, and the traditional method of instruction was used for the control group (N=27). First, an IELTS reading pretest was administered for both groups. Then, the MIDAS scale by Shearer (1996) in 119 items was administered to all participants. At the end of the course, all participants took an IELTS reading post-test and a motivation questionnaire. The results indicated that the art integration program resulted in candidates' outperformance in the traditional group in the IELTS reading exam, compared with the control group. Also, the motivation of IELTS candidates who attended an art education program was significantly increased, and they had very positive attitudes about integrating art in the IELTS reading classrooms. The results revealed that all the IELTS candidates' Multiple intelligences positively impacted their performance in the IELTS Reading exam, and the Musical, Kinesthetic Visual-spatial contributed the most to the IELTS reading exam performance and visual/spatial in third place, and after that, linguistic intelligence had a significant role in enhancing IELTS candidates' reading scores. Logical/mathematical intelligence has a moderate, interpersonal and naturalistic, and intrapersonal intelligence had a less significant impact on the IELTS candidates' performance in the reading section. Furthermore, the results indicated that musical intelligence and kinesthetic intelligence made a significant unique contribution to the prediction performance of candidates in the IELTS reading exam. After that, visual-spatial and linguistic intelligence played a significant role, respectively.