Influence Of Affective Factors On Autonomous English Learning Of Undergraduates Majoring In Music

In China, the students majoring in some kind of art have some special discrepancy with other majors. Their relatively weaker level of English and less English class hours lie in that the purpose of teaching art student is to cultivate good performance talents for the stage and their achievement in art seems to draw more attention. Besides, in university, the autonomous learning consciousness in the majority of art students is not strong, and few would like to make use of extra-curriculum activities to practise English, part of whom even begin to lose some basic skill of language learning.English Course Requirements for Non-English Majors, issued in2007by the Ministry of Education, explicitly pointed out that "one of the purposes of teaching mode reform is to promote the formation of personalized learning method and the development of students’ autonomous learning ability." Autonomous learning, as the premise of language learning, transfers responsibility from teachers to students themselves, and the duty on teachers is to develop students’ learning autonomy, teach them how to learn, and shape their individual learning habits, which can lay a good foundation for the lifelong education. The concept of autonomous learning fully embodies the essence of should be regarded as a whole person at first, and then a learner. To solve problems in learning, the key is the matter of people themselves, namely, solving the learners’ affect.In line with education psychology, one of the most important factors influencing learning efficiency in autonomous learning is but learners’ affective factors. Affective variables (including motivation, anxiety, attitude, motivation, personality, etc) play a considerable role in foreign language learning outcome, which means the differences in learning attitude, learning motivation and personality can result in the different effects and performances.This paper focuses on the five important affective factors:motivation, anxiety, attitude, confidence and personality. It is commonly thought that the motivation is a key to the success in the second language/foreign language learning. Many a research highlights the necessity of stimulation learners’ learning motivation. Anxiety is somehow bond with education, possibly the biggest affective barrier in the process of learning. Attitude, confidence and character also matter when students learn foreign language autonomously. The study is aimed at winkling out how affective factors plays in individual autonomous learning, finding out its negative influence and the proper solution, so as to promote more autonomous learning behaviours. By means of questionnaire, this author carried out the survey in October2011on autonomous learning behaviour and affective factors among81freshman majoring in music in central China Normal University. And then analysed and compared the collected data, and further proved the widespread existence of the influence of affective factors on the English autonomous learning behaviours.For most of art students, there is indeed something wrong with their affect in English learning. They are easily anxious, self-inferior and low-motivated, etc. However, except for the required attendance in class, they are almost ignored of the after-class autonomous learning behaviours. Correspondingly, a few of students with positive affect would frequently perform more autonomous learning behaviours.Teaching English for art students in university is also an art, involving not only English teachers’ quality and strategy but also the learners’ individual knowledge background, and their learning affective factors. Therefore, the teacher should help students form the correct learning motivation, reduce anxiety, enhancing confidence. In this way, the negative affective factors are eliminated while the positive ones are constructed to finally promote the students’ autonomous learning.