Applying Affective Strategies In The Foreign Language Classroom

Many of the major developments in language teaching during the past twenty-five years are in some way related to the need to acknowledge affects in language learning. According to Krashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis, various affective factors, including motivation, self-confidence and anxiety, play a facilitative, but non-causal, role in Second Language Acquisition (Krashen 1981a). Lack of motivation, low self-esteem, debilitating anxiety, etc. can combine to 'raise the filter,, to form a 'mental block,, which prevents Comprehensible Input (CI) from reaching the Language Acquisition Device (LAD), and thereby from being used for acquisition. A negative affective disposition (a filter that is 'up') constitutes a constraint on the successful workings of CI.The curriculum design in recent years has also been influenced by humanistic-affective currents of thoughts. A learner-centered language curriculum takes affects into account in many ways. Participation in the decision-making process opens up greater possibilities for learners to develop their whole potential. In addition to the language content, they also learn responsibility, negotiation skills and self-evaluation, all of which lead to greater self-esteem and self-awareness. With the issue of the New Course Criteria in China, Chinese Educators began to pay more attention on the affective factors of their students. In the New Criteria of English Course for Primary & Secondary Education in China, the affective attitudes refer to the interest, motivation, self-reliance, persistence, and cooperation [《英语课程标准解读》第八章 p.69], and they are mostly the positive affects. There are also negative affects that greatly influence the L2 learning, such as language anxiety, lack of confidence. In some way, affective factors concern not only the language learning and the education itself, but very much the development of a person. We don't want our children to be "affectively blank". So we must integrate language learning with the affective development of the students.In this paper, I also focus on the affective strategies used in Foreign Language Classrooms, and try to illustrate them in four ways: (1) The importance of helping the students recognize the emotions; (2) Caring for the students affective variables;(3) Humanistic Techniques - a Kind of Affective Strategies Applied in Classroom;(4) Cooperative Activities - another Kind of Affective Strategies Applied in Classroom. By doing these I try to find an economic and effective way of language teaching and learning.