The Influence Of Self-esteem And Anxiety On College Students’ English Learning

With the integration of the society and the blending of culture and economy, English grows more and more important in world languages and English learning is becoming increasingly significant. Although English teaching has made great achievements, there still exist phenomena in the college English teaching for a long time which only puts emphasis on cognition but ignores the affect. For example, in order to satisfy examinations, teachers make students do test paper mechanically, without considering cultivating students’affect. As a consequence, many students are fed up with learning, and their results are polarization. This not only influences the quality of English teaching, but also restricts the development of students’ affect. In the process of teaching and learning a language, cognition and affect are not contrary, but complementary to each other. In the contemporary society which stresses quality education and promotes lifelong learning, it becomes more important that teachers should make full use of affective factors in English teaching with the purpose of humanism and respect to create a pleasant atmosphere, to reduce students’ anxiety, to strengthen students’ confidence so as to advance students’ cognition. Humanists think that the final goal of the language education is to promote all the students’all-round development. However, for a long time, English teaching has excessively laid special emphasis on cognition and neglected affective factors on English learning. Both cognitive and affective factors must be united to solve emotional problems, which can improve the effect of language learning. Although there are many domestic and foreign scholars who have been concerned with the study of affective factors, it doesn’t get enough attention and even the definition and connotation of the affective factors are not fully consistent. This thesis attempts to conduct a survey of self-esteem and anxiety from the perspective of humanistic theory and Krashen’s affective filter hypothesis. Also the thesis attempts to clarify the study significance, theoretical basis and the basic connotation of affective factors. Besides, the thesis focuses on the relationship between the different degree of confidence as well as anxiety and the students’ achievements of English language learning.Through the means of questionnaire and test, the thesis tries to work out the students’ state of self-esteem and anxiety as well as their performance. It also analyses not only the situation of students’self-esteem and anxiety but also the relationship between students’ self-esteem levels and anxiety levels and their performance. Besides, the thesis looks into the reason and its application. In order to explore the current situation of college students’ affect in English classes and study the correlations between affect and students’ performance, the author has conducted a survey on84college students in Wuhan Bioengineering Institute. Then, data are collected and analyzed.The outcomes of survey also indicate that quite a few students have problems with self-esteem and anxiety. In addition, the research indicates there lies a remarkable positive relationship between students’ self-esteem levels and their learning achievements levels as well as students’ anxiety levels and their learning achievements. It shows the more confidence the learners have, the better results the learners get; the more anxious the learners are, the better outcomes the learners achieve.This thesis tries to explore how affective factors—self-esteem and anxiety affect students’ college English language learning. It aims at arousing foreign language teachers’ and learners’ the concern about the effect of self-esteem and anxiety on learning. Thus it can help teachers improve the quality of teaching and promote students’ ability of learning English.