The Correlation Between Teacher-Student Relationship And English Learners' Interest In Middle-School English Teaching

The relationship between teachers and students is one of important factors in English teaching process. Since the appearance of English teaching, their relationship has been changing as time goes on. It does not change at random, but changes according to certain theories such as the second language acquisition theory, humanism theory, personality factors, the social constructivist theory, communicative theory and so on. The gradually changing English teaching methods also embody certain conversion of the teacher-student relationship.The new English curricula criterion points out: "Teachers should pay attention to students' emotion attitudes. The emotion attitudes refers to the related factors that have influence on students' learning process and learning effects such as interest, motivation, confidence, purpose, and cooperation spirit. The key element that leads to English teaching success is to maintain positive learning attitudes. Teachers should motivate and strengthen students' learning interest, and guide them turn learning interest into steady learning motivation gradually, help them to build up confidence and the volition to conquer difficulties." The English teaching practice prove that teaching is both a cognitive process and an emotional process. English teaching process is not only concerning about learning environment, students' self language learning ability, teachers' teaching style and teaching level, but also involving learners' self emotion factors. Moreover, in the factors mentioned, learning motivation is a very important part.Is there any correlation between the two elements mentioned above? If the teacher-student relationship really affects the English learners' interest, is the correlation significant or not?The research aims at answering the following questions: 1. Is there any correlation between teacher-student relationship and English learners' learning interest? 2. Is the correlation between teacher-student relationship and English learners' learning interest significant? 3. How should we improve present teacher-student relationship and enhance English learners' learning interest?This thesis adopted qualitative research method, took 80 senior middle school students as the research objects of which 40 are in their first year in Grade Three and the rest are in their second year. The author tested their English learning interest and teacher-student relationship in their opinion separately by questioning them with questionnaires, then processed the data and analyzed the result with SPSS 13.0. The result of the research indicated that the present teacher-student relationship is not satisfying; and the students don't think highly of the teacher-student relationship. From their questionnaires, the teacher-student relationship is not in a harmonious state in which the teachers and the students understand each other, help each other and cooperate perfectly. On the contrary, they don't understand each other, seldom communicate with each other, and are not familiar with each other. Meanwhile, the score of English learning interest is not high, and the students lack interest and activity in English learning. However, just as the author predicted before the research, the correlation between teacher-student relationship and English learners' interest is significant. In the first- year Grade Three students, both their teacher-student relationship and English learning interest are better than the students who are in their second year in Grade Three.Based on the result of the research, we can draw a conclusion that the correlation between teacher-student relationship and English learning interest is striking and the teacher-student relationship can affect the English learning interest greatly. This just proved the author's hypothesis to be true. Moreover, the author proposes that the teachers should improve teacher-student relationship and arouse, maintain the students' English learning interest.In view of the result of the research, the author in this thesis finally put forward some suggestions on how to better teacher-student relationship and enhance students' English learning interest.