An Empirical Study Of The Influence Of Affective Factors-Motivation And Anxiety-on College English Reading

Language learning is not only a process of cognitive development,but also a process of emotional development.Affective factors such as motivation,anxiety,learning attitude always attract many scholars' attention.The domestic researchers mainly focus on the macro aspects of affective factors including theoretical research,the Basic English courses,and the overall objectives of the content.Few are on the specific research about affective factors and English learning.After consulting a large number of document literature,the researcher in this study found that affective factors play vital roles in foreign language learning,especially reading motivation,reading anxiety as well as reading strategies.This study on affective factors influencing college English reading can help students improve their reading ability and provide broader teaching ideas and methods for teachers.The subjects in this study are non-English Majors selected from Shenyang Normal University in 2015.Among them,175 subjects participate in the questionnaires and two classes with 35 students respectively are selected randomly.One class is control class.The other is experimental class.The experimental time is one semester.During the experiment,interactive reading model is used to teach English reading both in control class and in experimental class.Moreover,affective strategies are trained and adopted in experimental class during their English teaching.Affective factors adopted in experimental class include lowing students' anxiety,encouraging themselves and learning to take their temperature.The instruments in this research are questionnaires and tests.Data analysis is finished by using SPSS19.0 with the data of questionnaires and English reading tests between EC and CC.Four questions are mainly involved in the study.They are: 1)What is the students' motivation in college English reading 2)What factors cause learners' reading anxiety? 3)What is the relationship between reading anxiety and reading strategies? 4)How can teachers make use of affective strategies to improve students' reading ability?According to the investigation and analysis of students' questionnaires,students have different reading motivations in college English reading.Most of them belong to instrumental motivation.However,they all think it is important to read English and they all have different reasons to read English.The relationship between reading strategies and reading anxiety is negatively related.Students with higher anxiety tend to use less reading strategies in college English reading.In addition,five effective measures were taken for teachers to reduce reading anxiety in order to improve learner's reading ability.After the comparative analysis of students' reading performance in post-test of CC and EC,the conclusion is that students in EC get better scores than students in CC.In other words,students in EC can improve their reading ability quickly.