Empirical Research Into The Effects Of Affective Factors On Oral English Fluency

Affective factors have long been within the concern of Second Language Acquisition. However, it is so far regrettable that the effects of affective factors on oral fluency have seldom been studied.In the light of Krashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis, Long's Interaction Hypothesis as well as Swain's Output Hypothesis, the present thesis conducts an empirical research on 70 non-English major sophomores at Harbin Engineering University, aiming to look into the effects of four affective factors, involving motivation & attitude, anxiety, self-esteem as well as personality, on their oral English fluency. The instruments employed in the study include one questionnaire, an E-mail interview, an oral English test and SPSS 12.0 software.The findings manifest the following correlations existing between affective factors and oral English fluency: the integrative motivation plays a more important role than the instrumental motivation in producing oral English; anxiety is rather significantly and negatively correlated with oral English fluency; the higher self-esteem a learner has, the more fluent oral English the learner produces; there is a relatively weak correlation between personality and oral English fluency.