An Analysis Of The Influence Of Affective Teaching On The Students' Cognitive Development

Affect will be considered broadly as aspects of emotion, feeling, mood, or attitude which condition behavior during the process of learners'study. Linguistic scholars have shown that cognition and emotion are two aspects that are dependent on learning. Affective factors play a significant role in language teaching and learning. Attention to affective factors can lead to more effective language study.Observing the current state in Public English teaching in our school, although our English teachers tried to reform their teaching methods, the Public English teaching had no right-about-face, and the students'cognitive level was not obviously developed. Why? After studying the Humanism and classroom observing, the author thought most of English teachers had ignored a key point, that is, the teacher's attention to the students'affective needs in the English class, and in the English teaching, they had attached too much importance to cognitive side of language learning while neglecting the function of affective factors. In order to validate the thought, under the direction of theories: humanism, social interactionism, constructivism, combining the affective factors, the author designed questionnaires and made an investigation into the current affective state on 102 students from the non-English Department in Tieling Normal College and 60 English teachers. The survey showed the students in non-English Departments had short-term motivation, and little interest in English. And their self-esteem in learning English was low, so was their exam anxiety. They needed their teachers to cultivate and mobilize their active affect to English learning constantly. Although the teachers who were investigated had realized the importance and necessity of using affective factors in English teaching and learning, very few of them had really put them into practice in the communication between students and teachers in the class, the teaching task design and constructing classroom learning context and run short of idiographic methods. Some teachers still misunderstood the effect of the affective factors and did not know any affective aim in teaching. Based on the theoretical and current state analysis, the author puts forward the hypothesis: If teachers take some strategies to focus attention to cultivating students'positive emotions and to conduce to healthy affective development in the English class, students'affect will change and their cognition will be developed. So based on humanism, other theories and the results of the questionnaires, the author scans the public English teaching again from the teachers'part and puts forward some specific and feasible teacher strategies, emphasizing teachers should be facilitators, who are skilled in the use of current teaching methods and techniques, and who according to students'affective needs, instruct teaching and actively study and pay attention to the psychological learning atmosphere and the inner processes of learning on a moment by moment basis, with the aim of enabling learners to take as much responsibility for their learning as they can.The results and evaluation of two experiments prove the feasibility and generalization of these teacher strategies.Because of the limitation of the experimental condition and the status of myself, there are many shortcomings. For example, it isn't comprehensive that in the quantitative research, at cognitive level, only students'means were measured to show whether or not meeting students'affective needs could promote their cognitive development. Marks can only mirror part of students'cognitive level, so this way is not comprehensive to prove the cognitive development of students.