Study On Affective Factors In College English Teaching And Learning

With the rise and development of humanistic education, the teaching concept of "learner centered" is being highly rewarded and respected, then foreign language teaching researchers also begin to pay close attention to the influence of affective factors in language learning. Developing "whole person" is the goal of humanistic education, and it advocates to unify cognition and emotion. However, both at home and abroad, the present language teaching still lays too much emphasis on cognitive factors of language learning, while ignores the influence of affective factors in language learning.The purpose of this paper is to explore the affection problems in English teaching, analyze the reasons of affective problems. The author thinks that, at present, the insufficient understanding of students’affective factors in English teaching is the main reason of unsatisfied teaching effect and low learning efficiency.Based on Humanism and Krashen’s Monitor theory, this paper studies the affection of three important factors of college students-anxiety, self-efficacy and motivation-with questionnaires, interviews and case study. Through analysis of the investigation of the current affection situation of college students’English learning and the relationship between emotional factors of college students and their English achievements, the author finds problems and suggests some possible countermeasures, so as to help college students shifting negative affection to positive affection, then to improve their learning efficiency.The results show that:(1)In college English teaching and learning, a large part of students have learning anxiety and there is inverted U-shaped relationship between learning anxiety and English achievement:under the average level of anxiety, students’academic performance can reach the peak state, but if the anxiety level is too high or too low, the students’academic performance will be reduced, and high anxiety level has more negative influence on students’academic performance than low anxiety level.(2)There are three dimensions of the students’self-efficacy, among them, the confidence dimension is higher than the competence dimension and the evaluation dimension, in general, college students’English learning self-efficacy is unsatisfactory. Besides, self-efficacy of students’English learning is positively correlated with their academic achievement, that is, high self-efficacy students have high academic, and vice verse.(3) Most of the students have obvious instrumental motivation, and they are mainly for passing the CET-4, CET-6and postgraduate entrance examination, finding a good job in the future or going abroad for further study. As to integrative motivation, the subject students are interested in learning English or the culture of English countries. The motivation intensity also has a positive correlation with academic achievement. The author also find that both the instrumental motivation and integrative motivation can promote the improvement of English learning.(4) Most of the teachers have already realized the importance of learners’affective factors in English teaching and learning, but in the actual teaching, they rarely pay attention to students’affective factors.