Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis And High School English Listening Teaching Strategies

Listening ability in foreign language learning is one of the most basic and key skills. It isone of the means by which people communicate with each other and the main way to accesslanguage information and language perception. It is considered as the first step for thelearners to learn a foreign language. Listening, together with the other three basic skills oflanguage learning is regarded as the key to acquiring language. Foreign language listeningstrategy is a significant microscopic research field of learning strategy. The studies ofpredecessors have showed that the selection of different listening strategy can influence thelearner’s listening performance. However, while the current studies point out the problemmainly to the cognitive factors in foreign language learning, the affective factors have notattracted sufficient attention. The previous studies have emphasized that affective filter, whichmainly includes motivation, self-confidence and anxiety in foreign language learning, playinga very significant role in students’ English learning and there is a negative correlationbetween affective filter level and learning quality. Therefore, this thesis is aimed to explorethe academic achievement of English listening and the effective way to lower the affectivefilter of students.Mainly based on Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis, the author used a series ofsystematic instructional design and conducted the experiment which lasted a semester. Thisexperiment was carried out at a private senior high school in Kaifeng City.72students fromGrade One were selected as participants in the experiment. After a semester teachingexperiment, the author found that the affective strategies has more advantages in stimulatingstudents’ interest in learning and improving their listening efficiency.This thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter one is introduction. It introduces the background and significance of this study, as well as the structure of this thesis. Then, chaptertwo begins by stating a bird review of the frame work on listening teaching abroad and athome and points out the current situation of listening teaching in Chinese high schools.Chapter three introduces the theoretical basis of study such as the Affective FilterHypothesizes, Affective factors as well as the listening strategies is the key to solve the mainproblem of this study. Chapter four introduces an experiment designed with the guidance ofthe Affective Filter Hypothesis on listening practice in a private high school and aims to studyhow to integrate the affective strategies into three listening stages. The correlation amongaffective factors, listening strategies and both pre-test and post-test scores are explored whichfollows the result and analysis of the data from the survey and experiment. In chapter five, theauthor leads a discussion about the experiment result and gives implications and ways on howto produce an effective English listening teaching by using affective strategies in high schoolspractically. The last chapter gives a conclusion to this thesis.