A Research On Influence Of Affective Factors On English Major Graduates' Self-regulated Learning Competence

There are mainly two categories of factors that influence results of students' learning—cognitive factors and affective factors. It is a pity that cognitive factors are put on an important place and affective factors are neglected usually, which leads to emotional illiteracy. The importance of language education should be attached to the goal of human development. Thus, it should not only pay attention to cognitive factors, but also affective factors during language education. It is necessary to unit cognitive factors and affective factors together to pay a good deal of attention to a student to develop as a whole person (Cheng Xiaotang,2000), which indicates that affective factors are important for language learning. There are also a great number of researches that prove that affective factors can not be neglected in language learning and language teaching. Influences of affective factors are just discussed in researches about students'language learning in primary schools and middle schools, only a few of researches about that in colleges. There are few of researches about influences on English major graduates for the reason that many researchers think that English major graduates are adults and they can control their emotions. However, there are some researches that show affective factors can influence cognitive during students'language learning. Therefore, it is obvious to know that the importance of affective factors in English major graduates'self-regulated learning as self-regulated learning stands at a dominant place in English major graduates' study and research.In this essay, the author investigates influences of affective factors on English major graduates'self-regulated learning competence by empirical study, including two questionnaires, which are analyzed by quantitative analysis. The first questionnaire is about conditions of English major graduates'self-regulated learning competence, while the second one refers to affective factors of influences on English major graduates' self-regulated learning competence. The data of these two questionnaires are collected by EXCEL and analyzed by SPSS 16.0. The reliabilities of both questionnaires are analyzed, firstly; and descriptive statistics is used to analyze the data of the first questionnaire to find out conditions of English major graduates'self-regulated learning competence. Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis are used to analyze the data of the second questionnaire to find out not only influences on English major graduates'self-regulated learning, but also correlations among these four factors. According to the results of empirical studies, most subjects are poor in self-regulated learning competence and English major graduates'self-regulated learning competence is influenced by affective factors, which refer to motivation, self-esteem, anxiety and empathy, strongly. The results also illustrate that English major graduates'self-regulated learning is influenced by different factors in different degrees and motivation plays a critical role in the self-regulated learning because other three affective factors—self-esteem, anxiety, and empathy are also influenced by it. The results of correlations show that the higher motivation the subjects have, they will think they can do better job. At the same time, the subjects with higher self-esteem are more willing to seek chances to do their major research. With high self-esteem, they believe they can do better than others, so they may voluntarily involve themselves in no matter considering getting a scholarship, further pursuing study after graduation, getting good social evaluation, or whatever. Then, Some existing problems about English major graduates'self-regulated learning competence are analyzed in this study, which contains mainly four problems:①Subjects are lack of motivation;②Subjects are lack of self-evaluation and adjustment of learning strategies;③Most of them are in terribly anxiety during their self-regulated learning;④Subjects can not control material environment and social environment. In the end, some suggestions are made to improve English major graduates' self-regulated learning competence.This thesis consists of six chapters:introduction, literature review, study design, data analysis, implications and conclusion.Chapter One is an introduction that briefly explains the background of the research and the rationale of the choice of the topic and the questions which are to be handled in this essay.Chapter Two is literature review which introduces the theoretical background in detail which serves as the basis of the thesis and the definitions and explanations of the key terms involved in the study.Chapter Three is the study design, which reports the questionnaires, the present research methodology, which describes the research subjects, procedure.Chapter Four refers to ways of analyzing the data of questionnaires and description the statistical results and findings of the study gained from the questionnaire.Chapter Five is the implication of this study which proposes the existed problems in English major graduates' self-regulated learning and offers suggestions for the ways of enhancing English major graduates' self-regulated learning competence mainly from the angels of English major graduates and teachers or supervisors which based on the findings.Chapter Six is the conclusion of the thesis including summarization of the essay and discussions of the limitations which should be considered in further research.