A Study Of Affective Barriers Of Middle School Students In Oral English

In China, oral English learning has been the weak point. So how to improve learners' oral communicative competence is a significant problem that each language teacher faces to solve. Many English teachers have the experience that it is a tough job to make students speak in the oral class. What cause learners' inactive participation or silence in the oral class? It is of necessity to investigate factors which may obstruct or enhance oral English acquisition. Researches at home and abroad show that the learner's affective factors have a certain bearing on his English learning achievement (ELA), and, in some cases, even determine it success or failure. Much attention has been paid to learners' affective barriers in English teaching.The thesis based on the related research both at home and abroad, guided by the theory of pedagogy and educational psychology, attempt to explore the influence of affective barriers on their oral communication in the target language. It investigates into the affective barriers of several middle schools in Chaoyang city by questionnaires from five aspects: anxiety and lack of interest and so on, analyzes the causes of affective barriers in speaking English. The questionnaires results show that quite a number of subjects had affective barriers in the current English class and that the subjects' anxiety influences the oral communication significantly. Therefore, the author adopts some available affective countermeasures and classroom activities into experiment. According to the oral results' contrast of the contrastive class and the experiment class in which affective countermeasures have gone well, the paper draws a conclusion that effective affective teaching methods improve the students' ability in oral communication and lower affective barriers in middle school. This provides support to the significance and feasibility of affective method in the spoken English class and the study aims to mould good relationship between teachers and students, to improve English teaching and learning in class, to create a cooperative, harmonious learning atmosphere, and to seek better methodology for the improvement of English foreign language learning achievements.To conclude, learners' oral competence can be developed on the condition that the teaching quality of the oral class is improved. To achieve this, first of all, the problem of affective barriers should be solved. The present author believes that the most effective way to solve the problem is for the teacher to adopt the humanistic approach in the oral class. Then, full attention should be given to the students' emotional well-being, which has long been neglected but is urgently needed in the oral class, as well as to their linguistic competence. The author maintains that students' oral English competence will surely be improved when these learning difficulties can be overcome. Only when students can dare to speak, like to speak and be good at speaking will the overall level of middle school English teaching be improved. Only by doing this can we create a free, non-threatening classroom atmosphere for students so that they can overcome their emotional obstacles and actively participate in classroom activities.