Influence Of Affective Filter On Output Of Non-English Majors

Since 1970s, affective aspect of people has drawn much attention in every research field. Therefore, the learners'affective aspect in foreign language learning has been within the concern of Second Language Acquisition researchers. More and more linguists and language teachers have begun to lay particular emphasis on learner's individual differences, which made the influence of affective variables on language acquisition or learning process inevitably one of the most significant research fields in second language acquisition.In the early 80s, Krashen proposed the"Affective Filter Hypothesis"in his famous"Monitor Model", in which he believes that people acquire a language once the"comprehensible input"penetrates the affective filter and reaches their innate Language Acquisition Device. Krashen's theory was widely accepted, however, his theory about affective filter has almost been limited to the receptive stage of language acquisition, i.e. the input process, with the negligence of output. Although Krashen (1985) admitted the existence of a strong filter, a hesitancy to perform for psychological or affective reasons, he insisted that"affective filter"and"output filter"should be distinguished from each other in that"output filter"occurs where acquisition is already completed and thus brings no influences to language acquisition. Therefore, other theories appeared in the field, such as"Affective Filter"of Stevick,"Output Theory"of Swain,"ACT Model"of Anderson.Krashen's theory is based on the hypothesis of"acquisition=comprehension", so it is inevitable that he didn't give enough attention to the affective influence on output. However, output is actually an essential part for acquisition, on which the affective influence can not be denied: affective filter influences output through its influence on attention which is inevitably involved in controlled processing. Moreover, affective filter influences the whole developmental process of output through its influence on stages of output performance.This thesis has not only theoretically proven the influences, but also provided some evidences through an empirical study on non-English majors. The study has not only supported view points of this thesis, but also enriched empirical literatures of this research field. At last, some feasible suggestions to classroom activity arrangement, teachers and learners are proposed for lowering affective filter in output.