An Investigation Into Affective Teaching For English Major In China And Suggested Strategies

Affect plays a very important role in English teaching. Concern about students'affect not only facilitates their language learning but also is beneficial to students'development in body and mind. And it will finally realize the ultimate goal of quality education–human orientation. The investigation into affective teaching is always focusing on affective factors of junior middle school, high school and non-English majors but there are no investigations into the affective teaching for English majors. In order to promote the teaching in English major, the thesis makes an investigation into the affective teaching for English majors in China to make up for the shortcomings and deficiency of the former researches.The subjects of this research are 200 freshmen students and 40 teachers from Ningxia University and Sichuan International Studies University. The instruments of the investigation are questionnaires. The investigation is composed of five parts: 1) teachers'attitude towards affective teaching. 2) the application of affective teaching strategies and methods in class. 3) students'attitude towards affective teaching 4) students'affective state in class 5) the ideal teachers in students'mind. Based on the results of the investigations, the thesis comes to the following conclusions: 1. Teachers didn't give enough concern about students'affect. Teachers lack the affective teaching strategies and methods. Teachers lack the theory and methodology guidance of affective teaching. The investigation finds: 65% of the teachers think confidence is important for students'English learning. 50% of the teachers think it is necessary to know about students'personality, interest and hobbies. None of the teachers has clear understanding about affective teaching objectives. 10% of the teachers didn't know about it at all. 25% of the teachers never write the affective teaching objectives in their lesson plan.10% of the teachers have complete affective teaching strategies. 10% the English teachers often use affective teaching strategies and methods in their teaching. 35% and 25% of the teachers apply the affective processing strategies to teaching evaluation and teaching environment. Lacking theory guidance and affective teaching methods and techniques are the first two reasons which bring difficulties of carrying out affective teaching.2. Students'affective needs are not satisfied. The investigation finds: 45% of the students have interest in English learning. 14.5% and 30% of the students feel very nervous and a little nervous in class.63% of the students feel very nervous when answering questions.66% of the students have no confidence when answering the questions in class. 37% of the students'learning enthusiasm has ever been inhibited by the teachers. 52.5% of the students are enjoying their English learning. Based on the investigation results and dates, to achieve the purpose of optimizing teaching and promote students all-around development, the thesis put forward four affective processing strategies for the different curriculum designs : affective processing strategies for the teaching content, affective processing strategies for the classroom teaching organization, affective processing strategies for the teaching evaluation and affective processing strategies for the teaching environment.Finally, on the basis of the research findings, this study provides some pedagogical implications and points out the limitations of the present study and the expectations for the future research.