The Effects Of Affective Teaching Strategies On Self-taught Students' English Learning Motivation

Due to the impacts of examination-oriented education,like most other English teachers,in my self-taught EFL class I tend to regard the language as more of knowledge and pure skills to teach,focusing on grammar and explaining language points,ignoring affective status of students. In the process,I was the leader and spent most of the period lecturing,only to find students taking notes passively and losing their interests gradually.I found that the problems are related to some affective factors that are extremely apparent in the classroom:students are easily distracted, mostly expressionless,passively responding to my questions;they are anxious and nervous while facing study problems and obviously they lack motivation in the process of learning.As we all know,the concepts of affect and cognition are not contradictory to each other,but complementary with each other if integrated properly.In order to solve problems found in classroom,based on researches into affective teaching theories,practice and current EFL teaching situations,series of activities which are designed according to affective teaching strategies were put into practice of my self-taught students'class.Through data analysis of questionnaires and test results before and after 8-week experimental teaching,this paper aims to evaluate validity and feasibility of affective teaching strategies'influences upon students learning motivation,also providing further space to enrich and perfect the research.As an action research,this study also attempts to provide quantitative support with data from questionnaires and tests.The thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter one briefly introduces the background and significance of affective teaching;Chapter Two is literature review,through reviewing and referring to related researches,indicating relationships between affective teaching strategies and stimulation of students'learning motivations as well as anxiety and emphasizes the former's effects on the latter two;Chapter Three is to identify the problem,make plans and design solutions to solve the problem;and then Chapter Four deals with application of affective teaching in self-taught EFL teaching in the forms of designed activities.Chapter Three and Four are the most important parts of the thesis.Chapter Five concerns about reflections on the action research,meanwhile answers the proposed research questions.Chapter Six is the overall conclusion made from the action research.