The Relation Between MI and Motivation and Students’ Likes and Dislikes of Course Books: A Comparison Between Interchange and Top Notch Elementary Books

AbstractOne of the most compelling, yet controversial new approaches to educational reform is Multiple Intelligences Theory, or MI. Recent advances in cognitive science, developmental psychology and neuroscience suggest that each person's intelligence is actually made up of autonomous faculties that can work individually or in concert with other faculties. Motivation has, on the other hand, been widely accepted by both teachers and researchers as one of the key factors that influence the rate and success of second/foreign language learning. According to Gardner (1985), there are two types of motivation: integrative and instrumental. Researchers (Arnold & Fonseca, 2004; Christison,2005) argue that the base of intelligence and the type of motivation a learner possesses, affects the ways s/he favors certain materials and the ways s/he learns them. This study is an attempt to provide empirical evidence to the possible relation between the type and the base of intelligence and motivation, and learners’ satisfaction of Interchange and Top Notch Elementary books through a complicated analysis of the data obtained from Student Textbook Evaluation Questionnaire, Multiple Intelligences Development Assessment Scales (MIDAS) Questionnaire, and Gardner's Motivation Test Battery (MTB). In combining the results of the three questionnaires used, it was found that both groups had both instrumental and integrative motivation and a higher base of intrapersonal and logical-mathematical intelligences. They were also satisfied with their textbooks due to variety of topics and exercises included