A Study Of How The Positive Affective Factors Affect Middle School Students' English Learning

For a long time, in ELT the affective factors, which have motive power in students' foreign language learning, are much neglected. What's worse, many schools overemphasize competition, and it makes language learners too much axious, terrified of learning and dislike studying, thus it has a negative effect on learners' postivities. Humanism, which began to develop in 1950s, lays stress on affective factors in studying. And it advocates the learning-centered education and has an objection to the infusion with knowledge. From then on the affective factors; have been taken much concerns. S.D.Krashen put forward the affective filter hypothesis inl982. Krashen claims that learners with high motivation, self-confidence, a good self-image, and a low level of anxiety are better equipped for success in second language acquisition. Nowadays many experts both at home and abroad have made fruitful research into the influence of positive affective factors on foreign language teaching and learning. In order to study how much effect the positive affective factors have on middle school students' English learning, first the writer questionnaires one hundred students from Wuluolu Middle School on their affective taste in English learning. It shows the many students have affective problems in English learning. It is necessary for teachers to take affective factors into consideration. And then the writer pretests the experimental group and the control group to learn about their English level of the two groups. Next the writer performs an affective teaching model which applies the affective factors to experimental group while he uses the traditional teaching method in the control group. After a term's teaching experiment, the writer surveys their affective feedback in class. From it we can see that the experimental group are more active and they have higher motivation than the control group. Under the circumstances, do the experimental group students have better result than the control group students? The writer post-tests the two groups. The result of the experimental group is prominently better than the control group. The study shows that neglecting students' affective is one of the reasons why we don't get good teaching results. The study also tells us that we should not pump knowledge into students. Teachers must care for students and respect their individuality. Especially for junior students, we must bring down their anxiety in English learning. The study suggests that teachers and students should be equal in class and that teachers should motivates students' curiosity for knowledge. It also points out that teachers should apply affective factors to improve teaching and promote the development of students cognition and language practical competence. The study shows that positive affective factors play an important role in middle school students' English learning and that they can improve students' English results.