Transition Study Of English Emotional And Learning Needs Of Junior-One Middle School Students

Primary and junior school English are two different stages of a continuum in basic education. How to meet students'English emotional and learning needs effectively is a pressing issue. Guided by second language acquisition (SLA) theories concerning learners'emotional and learning needs, the researcher chose a natural junior–one class as the participants of this research. Through observing and analyzing the emotional and learning needs'changes and problems over one semester, the researcher arrived at the following findings:1) This group of junior-one students has experienced positive changes in emotional needs such as increased learning motivation, learning interest, and confidence. The emotional needs problem is seen in their rising classroom and test anxiety.2) Concerning the learning needs, this group of junior-one students experienced positive changes in developing more independent learning style, more parametric understanding of knowledge and culture, more self-directed learning habits and more explicit learning objectives. However, the gap between the junior-school English course requirements and students' language foundation brings learning difficulties to some students.3) The factors that positively influenced the participants'emotional and learning needs change mainly include their parents'effective supervision and the students'own psychological devleopment; while the existing problems have to do with the factors such as inadequate teacher-students'communication and the disconnection between the junior and primary school curriculum standards and assessment systems.Based on the above findings, the paper ends with some implications for solving students' English emotional and learning problems, with the hope to improve the English teaching for junior-one students in the transitional period.