A Study Of The Affective Filter Of Vocational College Students In English Learning And The Solutions

Since the focus of second language acquisition (SLA) has shifted from "how to teach" to "how to learn", people's concern about learners' individual differences (Ids) increases. Being one of the most important components of students' ID, affective filter's (AF) influence on SLA has been enjoying an increasing popularity. A lot of researches have been carried out and a lot of achievements have been got on the influence of AF on English teaching and learning. But, unfortunately, most researches have concentrated on undergraduate English learners and adult English learners. There are only few on students learning in vocational technical college (Vo-Tech College) up to now. But the population of Vo-Tech College students account for at least one third of the whole who are now studying at college level. Owing to our traditional education belief together with present talents selection system, most of the Vo-Tech entrants are those who didn't perform very well in college entrance exams. Due to their poor academic background, different educational streams and various experience, Vo-Tech college students usually have poor academic grades especially in English. They have high AF in English learning, which means they will have much trouble in learning English. As an English teacher in a Vo-Tech College, this author believe she should do something to deal with it especially in such a global context where English is so widely used and its importance can not be neglected.Armed with the theories related to affective factors and inspired by the findings in the literature review, this author has carried out a study between an experimental class (EC) and a control class( CC) in her own college within a schooling year and managed to find out the characteristics of Vo-Tech College students' AF in English learning, that is, the AF among Vo-Tech college students in their English learning is very high and the reason goes to their poor self-esteem, their weak motivations and their extremely very high anxiety. Major causes which contribute to their poor self-esteem, weak motivations and high anxiety were also found and the results reveal that students' poor self-esteem is mainly due to their constant failure in English study in the past; their poor interest and motivation in English learning are mainly from present poor employment situation in which graduates from Vo-Tech College have fewer and worse employment opportunities than those from 4-year universities. And, their anxiety is caused by their poor mastery of English, pressures from the peers, pressures from exams without whose records they can not get their diplomas. And also in the study, to diminish students' AF and improve their English, this author has explored some measures to increase students' self-esteem, strengthen their motivations and alleviate their anxiety and proved their effectiveness through the experiment. The procedures of the study is as follows:First, the author made a general investigation and found the major affective factors which Vo-Tech college students believe in closest relation to their English learning and then, based on the results of the general investigation and findings from the literature review, the author made a questionnaire with which to test the degree of students AF and its change. During the study, different teaching approaches were applied to EC and CC, three tests and three questionnaires were also given to them and the results were gathered and processed. The results showed greater improvement in both the reduction of AF and the English achievements in EC than in CC.The research approaches applied in this study are literature review, experimental approaches and interviews. Statistical software Excel 2000 and SPSS 13.0 were used to process data from investigations, tests and questionnaires.This is a tentative but fruitful study on characteristics of and solutions to AF of students in Vo-Tech College. The results of the study afford a theoretical and empirical basis for English learning in Vo-Tech college. But due to the limited duration and small sample, this research is inevitably imperfect in scope and depth. Further research asks for longer research time, larger sample and better research tools to guarantee more precise and complete answers.