A Study On Affective Factors In English Teaching In Rural Junior Middle School

Affection is the essential key factor in the process of English teaching and learning. However, traditionally, the authority of teachers is above everything. Teachers' emotion is not paid enough attention to, for which there are two reasons. First, according to the saying "A strict teacher produces outstanding students", every teacher is subconsciously strict with their students. Second, the motto "impart knowledge and educate people" means much responsibility of teachers, which makes great demands on their students, and this causes difficulties for them to devote themselves to affective teaching. According to the writer, overemphasizing teachers' strictness can lead to not only their ignorance of using affective factors to teach, but also students' ability of learning with emotions. The situation discussed above is much more obvious in English classes in the rural areas whose economic development level falls behind. Under the tide of curriculum reform, it's not enough for the teachers to improve students'ability of cognition with their professional teaching skills. How to help teachers promote English teaching and learning with affective factors is the key point in the paper.Given this kind of teaching situation, the writer theoretically states the importance of affection, based on humanism pedagogy and Krashen's (1981) "The Affective Filter Hypothesis". According to Arnold (1999), affective factors can be divided into two kinds, among which motivation, interest, attitude, self-esteem and empathy are the main aspects for the writer to study. Also, they are well proved for their importance during teaching process in the part of experimental study.Three research methods are used in the paper:questionnaire survey method, interviewing method and experimental study. The writer mainly investigates the affective state of junior middle school students in rural areas through questionnaires in order to present suitable model of English affective teaching, improve students' interest and cultivate their conscious activity of English learning, especially promote their positive attitude towards life and then finish English teaching tasks.The writer analyses students'affective problems during English learning and gets the private affective experience of prominent teachers interviewed, which can help solve kinds of problems that students meet during the experiments. The excellent experience of teachers interviewed is treated as good suggestions for teachers to carry out affective teaching.Through empirical study, the writer has got the following conclusions:1.Affective factors used in English teaching process can help improve students'interest and confidence, and strengthen their willpower to learn English well.2. Affective teaching methods in rural areas can help to promote students' positive attitudes towards life and it's good for their further development.3. Teaching with emotions can exactly improve students' performances on study.It has profound significance to use affective factors to teach English in rural area. But there are still shortages of my study found during the experiments. For example, the results are still not universal. Also, students may adapt to the affective teaching and learning process in different level because of the time limit of experimental study, and this may affect the results' accuracy. So using affective factors to teach is still a long term task.