Influence Of Affect Upon Learner Autonomy In Vocational College English Teaching

Since the 1970s, learner autonomy has been a heated topic on foreign language teaching and learning. Learner autonomy aims at cultivating learners'ability to learn autonomously, enable learners to manage their own learning and learn throughout their lifetime. As the center of their learning process, learners are being paid more and more attention to. Both theoretical research and practical research on learner autonomy have achieved great success. However, studies show that language learning process is not only cognitive development but also affective development and learner autonomy depends on learners'affects such as belief, expectation and attitude. To promote learners'affective factors, especially those of the students in vocational colleges has often been neglected, including their attitude, motivation, self-esteem, relations with their teachers or peers and the relaxing classroom atmosphere. Moreover, there is little research on the combination of affective factors and learner autonomy. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to explore the influence of affect upon learner autonomy in vocational college English teaching. On the basis of constructivism, humanistic psychology and social interaction theory, this paper raises two hypotheses: (1) Affective factors influence learner autonomy to a great extent (2) Learners'affective factors influence academic achievements. The author chooses 151 second-year students in four classes from Anhui Institute of International Business as the subjects, two classes act as the experimental group (EG) and the subjects in these two classes are experimented with affective factors for one semester. The experiment includes: (1) setting up learner profiles (2) building cooperation learning group (3) making comments on the subjects'homework, while the other two classes act as the control group (CG), they have the traditional class learning. All the subjects respond to the questionnaire sheets and take the test before and after the experiment. The data are analyzed with the help of SPSS 13.0. The result indicates that: (1) Affective factors have an impact on learner autonomy to some extent. The students in the experimental groups have more positive affective factors and more autonomous ability than those in the control group. Difference within the experimental group in most aspects is smaller than that within the control group. (2) Positive affective factors facilitate students'academic achievement. With higher learner autonomous ability, the students in the experimental group have higher academic achievements. It also shows that there is positive correlation between affective factors and learner autonomy, between affective factors and academic achievements. In the end, some findings and limitations of the study are displayed, followed by some suggestions for further research so that more positive affective factors will be aroused, the ability of learner autonomy will be cultivated and English teaching in vocational colleges will be promoted.