A Study On Affective Factors In Non-English Majors' Oral English Output

The development of humanistic psychology in 1960s attracts a lot of foreign language researchers'attention to human affect, and most researchers believe learners'affective situation is crucial to their learning outcome. Until now, the study of learners'affective factors in second language acquisition has become a major concern. Therefore, on the basis of previous studies, the author investigated the influence of learners'affective factors on their oral English output within the framework of Levelt's Speech Production Model and Swain's Output Hypothesis. At the same time, the following three questions were addressed:(1) What are the affective factors that may influence non-English majors'oral English output?(2) How do these affective factors influence non-English majors'oral English output?(3) What are the solutions to overcome those affective obstacles?This study was conducted at Zhengzhou University and the research subjects were 68 non-English major freshmen. At the beginning of the semester, the subjects were divided into two classes evenly. One class was treated as the experimental group, and the other one as control group. In the experimental group, the author intentionally took some measures to lower students'affective filter. While in the control group the author did not take the same measure and said nothing about affective factors. The instruments employed in this study included a questionnaire, two oral English tests, classroom observations and SPSS 16.0 software. In addition, both qualitative and quantitative analysis were used in analyzing the data.After one semester's experiment, the author found that most subjects held positive attitudes toward oral English, and they had strong motivation to improve their oral English proficiency. However, a large majority of the subjects felt anxious about oral English output and they were not confident enough in themselves. Moreover, the experiment proved that stimulating students'motivation, lowering their anxiety and increasing their self-esteem could enhance their oral English accuracy and fluency.The findings of this study may provide a reference for oral English teachers about students' affective situation in English teaching process, so that they can change teaching methods and improve teaching environment accordingly to achieve effective teaching results. However, owing to some subjective and objective factors, the experiment still has some limitations. The author suggests that longer time be spent in further study to increase the experimental reliability.