MULTIPLE INTELIGENCES (VERBAL-LINGUISTIC)

Use written and spoken language to express complex meaning

• The capacity to use language, your native language, and perhaps other languages, to express what's on your mind and to understand other people
• Poets really specialize in linguistic intelligence, but any kind of writer, orator, speaker, lawyer, or a person for whom language is an important stock in trade, highlights linguistic intelligence
• Well-developed verbal skills and sensitivity to the sounds, meanings and rhythms of words
• Occurs through written and spoken words, such as in essays, speeches, books, informal conversation, debates, and jokes

This intelligence involves the knowing that comes through the language, through reading, writing, and speaking.  It involves understanding the order and meaning of words in both speech and writing and how to properly use the language.  It involves understanding the socio-cultural nuances of a language, including idioms, plays on words, and linguistically based humor.
If this is a strong intelligence for you, you have highly developed skills for reading, speaking, and writing, and you tend to think in words.  You probably like various kinds of literature, playing word games, making up poetry and stories, getting into involved discussions with other people, debating, working crossword puzzles, formal speaking, creative writing, and the remembering of and art of telling jokes.  You are likely precise in expressing yourself and irritated when others are not.  You love learning new words, you do well with written assignments, and your comprehension of anything you read is high.
Careers:
Poets, public speakers, journalists, writers (authors, advertising, script and speech writers), speech pathologists, lawyers, secretaries, editors, proofreaders, comedians, debaters, archivists, translators, TV and radio newscasters, commentators, announcers
BENEFITS to you when you strengthen your WordSmarts include: 

• Enhanced capacities for communicating your ideas, thoughts, and feelings
• A greater appreciation of humor based on words, such as puns, jokes, limericks, and so on
• Improved abilities and confidence for expressing yourself through any kind of writing
• New abilities for persuading others to take a certain course of action
• Strengthened skills at leading meetings

Teaching Resources

• Diary entries
• Government documents
• Personal narratives
• Historical documents
• Letters

Basic MI Activities - Teaching Activities

• Compose essays
• Poetry, etc. for publishing on web page
• Critique written resources through an annotated bibliography (hypertext)

Instructional Strategies - Teaching Activities

• Discussion
• Narration
• Advanced organizers
• Writing activities

Linguistic-verbal intelligence is that ability to use words effectively either orally or in writing, that is, the ability to exhibit language development in its fullest form, in short, the overall structure of language.  This way of knowing and comprehending the real world is the ability to use language to achieve a goal and enhance understanding.  A core component of this traditional IQ-type intelligence is sensitivity to the meanings, rhythms, and sounds of words ... in short, sensitivity to the different functions of language.

• Young children with this dominance often demand story after story around bedtime.  When they enter school, they have highly developed verbal skills, enjoy developing rhymes, and often pun.  In short, they tend to think in words.  They like oral and silent reading exercises, playing word games, enjoying a variety of reading and writing materials at learning centers, making up poetry and stories, getting into involved discussions, debates, formal speaking, creative writing, and telling complicated jokes.  
• Older children possess strong vocabularies, and, at times, can get so lost in a thick book that they almost forget about their dinner.  At this age, they may subscribe to their favorite magazines, or use a word processing application to keep a personal diary or secret journal.
• Adults tend to be precise in expressing themselves; they love verbalizing and writing well.  Also, their understanding of what they have read  tends to be well above the norm

People Examples:

Shakespeare
Agatha Christie
Margery Williams
Maya Angelou
Hemingway
Longfellow
Louisa May Alcott
Robert Frost
Mark TwainMary Higgins Clark
Steinbeck
J. K. Rowlings
Elizabeth Barrett
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