A Study On The Influence Of Affective Factors On YCBM Students’ Autonomous English Learning

With the fast development of modern society，people need to study continuallythroughout their lifetime in order to stay competitive. In accordance withconstructivism, humanism and social cognitive theory and from the nature of study,only when a learner is actively devoted to learning is the learning activity effective.Since the1950s, learner autonomy has become a heated research topic in the field ofeducation psychology. Then in the1980s, Holec first introduced this idea into Englishteaching and learning, defining it as “an ability to manage one’s own learning”, thepurpose of which is to help learners to learn autonomously and keep a lifelong study.However a growing body of research suggests that English autonomous learning isnot simply a process of cognitive development, in fact, which depends heavily onlearners’ affective factors as well, such as attitude, motivation and self-esteem.Therefore affective factors play a crucial role in learning, yet relatively fewresearches are carried out on the combination of affective factors of students fromvocational colleges (hereinafter VC) with learner autonomy. This paper aims toexplore how and to what extent affective factors impact learners’ autonomouslearning. The author chooses63students of grade12from Yunnan College ofBusiness Management (hereinafter YCBM) majoring in Nursing as the researchsubjects, who are divided into an experimental class (hereinafter EC) and a controlclass (hereinafter CC). The students from the first class receive a training ofcultivation of positive affective factors for one semester, while those from the otherclass receive the traditional way of teaching. This investigation adopts questionnairesand comparison of academic scores, the data of which are analyzed with the help ofSPSS19.0and the results of which are as follows:(1）Affective factors do have aninfluence on students’ autonomous learning to some extent.(2) Cultivation ofstudents’ positive affective factors can promote English autonomous learning andacademic achievement. The research at YCBM also indicates that affective teaching is quite necessary for English teachers to create a relaxed, cheerful, and democraticlearning atmosphere, putting emphasis on cultivating learners’ positive affectivefactors and eliminating negative ones, thus finally improving learners’ autonomouslearning ability.