A Study On The Factors Affecting Junior High School Students’ English Classroom Enjoyment

With the rise and development of positive psychology,the emotion research in the field of second language acquisition has taken a “positive turn”.More and more scholars begin to pay attention to and investigate the positive emotion of foreign language learners and its influencing factors.This is because positive emotions can expand students’ awareness in foreign language classroom,mobilize students’ communicative willingness,enhance their application of learning strategies,and thus improve the efficiency and effectiveness of classroom learning.Therefore,it is of great significance to study positive emotions related to foreign language learning.Among the positive emotions,Foreign Language Enjoyment(FLE)has received the most attention from researchers.It is generally believed that FLE is not only controlled by internal factors such as learner’s personality characteristics,learner’ s foreign language competence,etc.,but also influenced by external factors including teacher-related factors,classroom atmosphere,and social culture.Although some researchers have achieved remarkable results,most of the studies only focus on the FLE of college students and senior high school students,and the exploration of factors that influence the FLE of junior high school students in China is rare,so it is necessary to investigate the internal and external factors that affect junior high school students’ English classroom enjoyment.The following three research questions are answered in the present study:(1)What is the current level of junior high school students’ English classroom enjoyment?(2)What are the internal and external factors that affect junior high school students’ English classroom enjoyment?(3)What strategies can teachers use to positively enhance junior high school students’ English classroom enjoyment?In this study,208 Grade 8 students from a junior high school in Shanghai were selected as research participants.Questionnaires were used to investigate the current level of junior high school students’ English classroom enjoyment.Focus writing was used to collect first-hand data and NVivo11 software was used to encode text fragments at three levels so as to extract internal and external factors affecting junior high school students’ enjoyment in English classroom.In addition,16 students with different levels of English classroom enjoyment were selected for in-depth interviews to verify and supplement the internal and external factors.Through data analysis,the study obtained the following findings:To begin with,junior high school students’ enjoyment in English class was generally at a medium level,which still needs to be further improved.Specifically,the level of enjoyment obtained from teacher support and student support was high while the level of enjoyment obtained from English learning was at a medium level,which can be further enhanced.Secondly,the factors affecting junior high school students’ English classroom enjoyment can be divided into three categories,namely,teacher-related factors,peerrelated factors and self-related factors.Teacher-related factors can be further divided into five aspects: teacher’s personality(20.45%),teaching activities(19.43%),teaching content(15.59%),teacher’s support(14.37%)and teacher’s literacy(8.50%).Personal factors can be divided into three categories: learning motivation(5.47%),academic performance(3.85%)and personality characteristics(2.83%).Peer-related factors can be classified into peer support(5.26%)and peer relationship(4.25%).The above results show that all of these internal and external factors have different degrees of influence on students’ English classroom enjoyment and the teacher-related factors are dominant among them.Thirdly,based on the internal and external factors influencing students’ English classroom enjoyment obtained from this study,the author provides relevant strategies for teachers to positively improve English classroom enjoyment of junior high school students: teachers are supposed to shape positive personality,develop comprehensive literacy,provide multi-dimensional support to students,choose colorful teaching content and design diversified teaching activities.Based on the above research results,this study provides important enlightenment for teachers to improve students’ English classroom enjoyment,but there are still limitations in sample size and data analysis of the present study,so suggestions for subsequent research are put forward.