A Study On The Influence Of English Teacher's Feedback Strategies On Learners' Affect

Many researchers home and abroad have done lots of researches on learners'affect. In fact, there are many factors can influence learners'affect, among which teacher's feedback is very crucial and important. However, so far, there are still not enough researches about the influence of teacher's feedback on learners'affect.Chinese college students have a unique and rich affect, in view of this, the dissertation is based on the related studies from home and abroad and use Krashen's affective filter hypothesis to explore the influence of college English teacher's feedback on learners'affect in China. The hypothesis believes that a lot of comprehensible input in the environment does not mean that students can learn the target language well, and the second language acquisition process is affected by a number of affective factors. Krashen views that the affective factors that affect the acquisition of language are:motivation, self-confidence and anxiety. Teacher's feedback as an important factor in foreign language classroom promotes the classroom teaching by influencing the learners' affect.The author of the dissertation chose 326 students in eight non-English major classes in Northeast Forestry University and Cambridge College of Heilongjiang University as the research subjects and four questions were proposed in this research. During one term's investigation, the author collected data with four data-collecting instruments:classroom recording, students' interviews, reflective diaries and questionnaire, and then the data were transcribed into words.In data analysis part, this paper first pointed out the present situation of teacher feedback strategies in college English classroom through classroom recordings, and showed the students' preferences towards teacher's feedback strategies through students'interviews, reflective diaries and questionnaire analyses. According to these data analyses, the results of the four research questions were found out. The first one is the characteristics of the teacher's feedback in college English classroom. Through the research, three characteristics were found, namely: teacher's feedback is various; positive feedback is much more than negative feedback; explicit feedback is less than implicit feedback. The second one is teacher's feedback strategies the college teachers use in English classroom. There are about twelve teacher's feedback strategies in college English classrooms are commonly used. The third one is the influence of teacher's feedback strategies on students' affect. The twelve teacher's feedback strategies influence on students' affect can be described as follows:in language classroom, positive feedback strategies have the advantage of stimulating the learners'motivation, enhancing their confidence and reducing their anxiety in foreign language learning. The last one is that there are three problems in college English teacher's feedback, namely, the inflexibility of feedback language; the lack of non-verbal feedback strategies and the insufficiency of teacher's feedback theory. In response to these problems, this dissertation offered some implications:the need of improving teachers' language skills; the need of improving teacher's feedback strategies; the need of giving students more affective and psychological concerns and the need of doing necessary communication with students.The classroom is the main place for learners, especially for Chinese learners to learn a foreign language. Only when the present situation and current problems of teacher's feedback in college English class are well understood and the further and deep researches in English classroom teaching are conducted, can college English teachers pay enough attention to the affective needs of students. The dissertation provided some reference value on how to make better use of teacher's feedback strategies in classroom to foster the English teaching.