Exploration On Learners' Negative Affects Elimination And Positive Affects Construction In Foreign Language Learning And Teaching

This thesis sets out to appeal for extensive attention toward affective factors in foreign language learning and teaching, and to explore ways to help learners eliminate negative affects and construct positive ones in the process of learning and teaching, so as to develop their language proficiency and promote learning effect and efficiency as well as learners' development as a whole person.The term affect has long been touched on in the older psychological literature and has begun to catch eyes of educators, psychologists and linguists since the second half of the twentieth century. In this paper, affect is considered as aspects of emotions, feelings, moods or attitudes which condition learners' behaviors.Over the past several decades, educators have regarded learners' affective development as an essential educational objective and agreed on that the affective and cognitive domain in education is inseparable (Piaget, 1981). And the learners' problems resulted from the negligence of affect in the daily practice of education, has powerfully proved affect a factor that needs extensive attention.The rise of humanistic psychology in 1960s revolutionarily shifted peoples' attention to the neglected inner world of human being. Humanistic psychologists place the individual's thoughts, feelings and emotions at the forefront of all human development. The theories of two most celebrated representatives of humanists, Rogers' theory of the person (1959,1961, 1969) and Maslow's theory of motivation (1964, 1970), especially bring inexhaustible indication and inspiration to affective education.With the impact of humanistic psychology and the improved notions in education, the significance of affective factors in foreign language learning has been noticed and emphasized in various SLA theories. Foreign language teaching experts and researchers also explored specific ways of incorporating the affective development into language teaching and learning. The teaching methods came to the fore in 1970s and 1980s all take into account the affective side in a central manner. These theories and methods provide rich instructions and references for further exploration of controlling affective factors rationally in language learning and teaching.To seek for solution to foreign language learners' affective problems, a broad understanding of affective factors and affective problems influencing foreign language learning should be possessed at first. In Chapter three of this paper, specific affective factors are analyzed from their definition, their influence toward language learning, to how they influence learning; common affective problems learners hold are also concluded from investigations made by several language teachersAffective factors can be classified into individual factors and relational factors in two perspectives: that regard learners as individual and that consider learners as participant in the socio-cultural situation. The individual affective factors include: anxiety, motivation, self-esteem and inhibition. The relational affective factors involve empathy, classroom transaction and cross-cultural awareness. Positive affective factors promote learning, while negative ones block the way of effective learning. And at most times, the emotions affecting language learning are intertwined and interrelated. They emerge at any stages in the learning and teaching process. Thus, affective factors and their influences are rather complicated.Investigations show that Chinese foreign language learners' affective state in foreign language learning is not encouraging, and affective problems exist extensively among learners. The problems cover various anxiety, lack in motivation, low self-esteem, etc. Apparently, to explore ways to eliminate foreign language learners' affective problems and help them construct positive affects, so as to facilitate effective learning, has become a task allowing of no delay.Dealing with the learners' affective problems is not an easy job. To solve the affective problems of foreign language le...