A Study Of Correlation Between Affect And English Learning Achievements Of Senior Middle School Students

Nowadays, elementary education is facing great reformation. In thisreformation, one of the most important aspects is to pay more attention tothe learners' affective factors. It emphasizes to combine the learners'affect with language learning. At the stage of elementary education, moreand more attention is paid not only to the learners' language inputs andlanguage skills, but also to the learners' affect. In contrast with othersubjects, the relation between language and affect is closer. Thus, in newstandard of English curriculum, affective factor is regarded as one of themost important targets.The author thinks that there are two kinds of wrong trends in Englishteaching. First, some teachers usually neglect the importance of affect,but draw more attention to the learners' intelligence factors. This usuallyleads to emotional illiteracy. Second, some teachers usually ignore therelation between affect and cognition. Thus during the process of teaching,they always value the learners' cognition, but seldom concern with theaffective questions.There are many English scholars who have been concerned with thestudy of affective questions. The aim of this article is about affect inEnglish learning in middle schools. The writer analyzes the importance ofthis study, the theoretical bases, the connotation of affective factors andhow affective factors affect English learning.This study aims to find out the relation between affect and seniormiddle school students' English learning achievements so as to improve the students' efficiency in learning English.Firstly, the writer presents the importance of this study, including theresearch background, and some relevant research on affect in LanguageLearning.In addition, the author also surveys the theory of humanisticpsychology and the theory of SLA.These theories serve as the theoreticalfoundation for the discussion of affect in senior school students' Englishlearning achievements.Secondly, the writer has a discussion about the major affectivefactors in senior school learning, including motivation, anxiety, attitudestowards teachers and materials and students' personality etc..Thirdly, the writer does a research about the influence of affect onsenior high school students' English achievements. This study involves585 students from Huiyang Chongya Senior High School in Huizhou,Guangdong province. The students are from ten classes in senior. In orderto find out the relation between affect and students' learningachievements, research methods such open-ended questionnaire and twotests are used in this study.From the results got in the questionnaire, the writer finds out thatdifferent students have different affcctivc characteristics, according towhich, the writer divides the students into three groups: Group 1 havepositive affect, Group 2 have less positive affect than Group 1. Group 3have negative affect.Finally the writer analyzes the students' affect and theirachievements in the middle Term Test and the Final Term Test and drawsthe following major conclusions:1) Students who have intrinsic, integrative motivation, learning English better than those who have extrinsic, instrumental motivation.2) Appropriate anxiety can facilitate students' English learning; on thecontrast, too much or no anxiety may inhibit the students from learningEnglish well3) Good relationship between teachers and students can benefit thestudents' English learning.4) The students' characters such as extroversion and introversion alsohave influence on their English achievements.Based on these conclusions, the writer discusses the ways toimprove students' active affect in class so as to promote the students'English learning achievements. The ways are the following:1) Using various kinds of activities in class to motivate the students,and trying to change extrinsic motivation into intrinsic motivation,instrumental into integrative ones as well.2) Establishing a equal, democratic and harmonious atmosphere andgood relationship between teachers and students in class.3) Adjusting the students' anxiety according to their differentcharacteristics, advice is given as follows:a) Exercises in and out of class should be from easy ones to difficultones in order to reduce too much anxiety.b) Assigning the students tasks that are a bit difficult to make themin the air of tension.4) Developing students' other kinds of affect, such as confidence andresponsibilities also can facilitate their English learning.