Affective Factors On Vocational College Students' Second Language Acquisition

This paper investigates the affective condition of the Chinese Vocational College students in the process of English teaching and learning, and analyzes its influence on their English performance in the final exam. Based on the investigation, cognition and emotion, considered as two sides of learning, are seriously separated from each other in vocational college English classes in China. Too much importance is attached to the cognitive side of language learning while the function of affective factors has been ignored. Most students learn English by their self-discipline to some extent. The author reckons that the result was attributed to the low efficiency of English teaching and learning. Three major affective factors of the language learner are researched in this paper:motivation, anxiety and self-esteem, which are closely connected with English Language Teaching (ELT) and can be adjusted by instructions in classroom.The study is going to help teachers and students to find ways to promote learning efficiency, teaching quality and improve all-round development of the students. To achieve the task, the author has investigated 133 vocational college students and 34 English teachers on the North Campus of Beijing City University, aiming at exploring the current situation of vocational college students'affect in English classes as well as the correlations between affective factors and their performance in their final English exam on the basis of data collection and data analysis.The result of the investigation shows that most of the students have obvious positive learning motivation. Their extrinsic motivation is searching for a good job in the future as well as going abroad for further study, etc. As to intrinsic motivation, many students enjoy learning English and are interested in cultures and customs in English speaking countries. It showed that motivation could promote learner's English learning, no matter which kind of motivation the students possess. The result of the investigation also indicates that a larger number of students'anxiety level is high in the current vocational college English class. There is an apparent negative correlation between students'anxiety levels and their learning achievement. As to self-esteem, the result of investigation shows that there is an apparently positive correlation between self-esteem and the learners'English achievements:the better self-esteem a students has, the higher he or she scores.