On College Students' English Learning Guided By The Affective Filter Hypothesis

Second language acquisition research, as an independent discipline, emerged in the late 1960 s and early 1970 s. As the second language acquisition research is paid great attention by more and more people, the language acquisition theories also flourished rapidly. Among the massive research theories, the most controversial and influential one is the Theory of Language Monitor by American linguist Krashen's.The theory connects linguistic theory with language teaching practice, and provides theoretical basis for the improvement of foreign language teaching in our country.The Affective Filter Hypothesis, one hypothesis of the Language Monitor Theory, has brought forth great response in the second language acquisition field. This hypothesis specifies that the affective factors of learners will influence the effects of their second language learning. As people pay more and more attention to the effects of affective factors in language teaching, some educationalists and linguists have started their researches on the influences of the affective factors on the language teaching.Researchers at home and abroad such as Rod Ellis, Wen Qiufang have already carried out researches on the effect of the affective factors on foreign language learning. We can get a great deal of enlightenments from the previous studies, which can improve language teaching and learning to a certain extent.This thesis makes an empirical study of college English teaching among non-English majors in Jiujiang University, under the theoretical framework of Affective Filter Hypothesis. It aims to provide inspiration for the students, reduce their anxiety, and enhance their self-confidence in English learning.At the beginning of the experiment, the average scores of the two classes are very close, so the students of the two classes are almost at the same level. During the experiment, one class is chosen as the experimental class(EC) randomly and the other as the control class(CC). According to the results of the survey, the students ofthe experimental class are basically divided into three groups, students with low motivation, students lacking self-confidence and the students with high anxiety.Different teaching methods will be used for different students based on the Affective Filter Hypothesis. The students of the experimental class take part in two tests and the collected data are analyzed by the software SPSS 22.0. Firstly, comparing scores between pre-test and post-test with the Paired Sample Test, we know that there are significant differences in the scores of listening, reading, writing and translation. The students from the experimental class make progress in English learning especially in listening, reading, writing and translation. It is the evidence that the teaching guided by the Affective Filter Hypothesis is effective. Secondly, from the CET 4 scores between EC and CC analyzed by Independent Sample Test, there are also significant differences between EC and CC. The scores of EC are higher than those of CC in listening, reading, writing and translation respectively. It is also the evidence that the teaching guided by the Affective Filter Hypothesis is effective. Thus, for different students' affective factors, the teaching guided by the Affective Filter Hypothesis Theory is effective in English learning and is helpful for students' achievements.This thesis is made up of six chapters. The first chapter provides an introduction including the background of the study, purpose of the study and layout of the thesis.Chapter 2 is the literature review on the basic and important theory related to this study. Chapter 3 introduces the theoretical basis, including three factors of Krashen's Affective Filter Theory, namely motivation, self-confidence and anxiety. Chapter 4 is methodology, in which the research subject, research design, the research procedures and a teaching example are illustrated in detail. Chapter 5 focuses on data analysis and results discussion. Chapter 6 comes to the conclusion, including major findings and limitations of the research, and suggestions for further study.