A Study Of Affective Factors In College English Teaching And Learning

With the development of humanistic psychology in the 1960s, people's attention is gradually invited to the affect of human beings. The research in language learning and teaching is also shifting much weight to learners' affective domain. Educators have regarded learners' affective development as an essential educational objective and agreed on that the affective and cognitive domains in education are inseparable. This thesis intends to investigate the affective state of the Chinese college students in English teaching and learning, and analyze its influence on their English learning. Through the investigation this author finds that in college English classes in China, the two sides of learning-cognition and emotion are now seriously separated from each other: too much importance is given to the cognitive side of language learning while neglecting the function of affective factors. Most students study English by their self-discipline to a certain extent. The author thinks that this accounts for the low efficiency of English teaching and learning in China.This thesis studies learners' three major affective factors: motivation, anxiety and self-esteem, which are closely related to English language teaching (ELT) and can be adjusted by the instruction in classroom.The aim of the study is to help teachers and students find ways to improve learning efficiency, teaching quality and promote all-around development of the students. To this end, the author has investigated 160 college students in Jishou University, collected data and analyzed them so as to explore the current situation of college students' affect in English classes as well as the correlations between affective factors and their achievements in their English learning. The investigation results show that most of the subjects have obvious positive learning motivation. Their extrinsic motivations are mainly for passing CET-4 & CET-6, finding a good job in the future or going abroad for further study, etc. As to intrinsic motivation, many of the subjects are fond of learning English and interested in cultures and customs in English-speaking countries. Both the extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation have promoted learners' English learning.The investigation results also show that quite a number of subjects' anxiety level is high in the current English class. The study also shows that there is a notably negative correlation between students' anxiety levels and their learning achievements.As to the self-esteem, the investigation results show that there is obvious positive correlation between self-esteem and the learners' English achievements: the better self-esteem a student has, the higher he/she scores.