Exploration Of The Role Of Affect In FLT From A Constructivist Perspective

This thesis is an attempt to explore the role of affect in foreign languageteaching from a constructivist point of view based on the theory of affectivedevelopment.Recent developments in psychology have raised affect to a prominentposition. The affective factors involved in foreign language learning haveattracted more attention of the researchers both at home and abroad.Constructivism, as the most vigorous cognitive psychology branch, has itsown theory of affective development, which provides us with a newperspective on it. Based on constructivism, it's probable for us to do theresearch of the role of affect in foreign language learning and teaching in amore systematic way.Constructivism holds that knowledge is constructed by individuals.Individuals are actively involved right from birth in constructing personalmeaning, that is, their own personal understanding of the world from theirformer experiences. Intellectual development includes two aspects: thecognitive and the affective, the two of which are inseparable. In the learningprocess, cognitive construction and affective construction occur at the sametime and are correlated with each other. In an ideal foreign language learningprocess, students should experience and at the same time construct positiveaffect, stimulate internal motivation, foster proper self-esteem and reduceanxiety together with other negative emotions. Therefore, foreign language teachers should embrace affective goals as part of its teaching goals, and fullyutilize the interaction between cognition and affect of students for effectivelearning.In order to strengthen the reliability and validity of the study,questionnaire, observation, and interview are used for data collection. Theresults indicate that most students have some problems in affect and theydon't have the correct perception of their active and central role in learning.With regard to teachers'role, the results reflect actually most teachers havenot given up the dominant place and they fail to provide an appropriateenvironment for helping students to construct positive affect. Based on thefindings of the research and enlightened by constructivism, multimedialanguage teaching (MLT) and cooperative learning (CL) are introduced indetail as most important approaches to develop positive affect. Both of thetwo approaches have gained broad acceptance in language classroomprincipally because of their contributions to improving the overall climate ofthe classroom in which learners'psychological needs are met.The suggestions put forward in this study are expected to fully practiceand evaluate the results with the hope that it would be beneficial and coulddraw others'attention to the targeted area.This thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter 1 is an introduction about the research background, objective andmethods, and significance of this study.Chapter 2 first reviews the previous studies on affect and relevant theoriesabout learning and teaching methodology. Then it continues to deal with fourmain affective factors: motivation, attitude, self-esteem and anxiety. For each item, theoretical assumptions, research findings and implications for FLL &FLT are discussed.Chapter 3 is the overview of constructivism including basic assumptionsof constructivism and constructivist view of affect in FLL & FLT.Chapter 4 makes a detailed description of the survey and its findings,including the design of the survey, data analysis and results.Chapter 5 is the core of this dissertation, aiming to find approaches todeveloping positive affect in classroom. Multimedia language teaching andcooperative teaching are discussed in detail, with the focus on their greatvalue in helping students construct positive affect.Chapter 6 is a conclusion, which makes a summary of this thesis andpoints outs the necessity of furthering study in this area in order to make itmore enlightening.