Aflfective Strategies And Oral English Learning

The former researches have shown that the subjective factors that influence learners’ learning behaviors and results mainly include two aspects:cognition and affect. It is a great contribution to the study of learning. But there still exists some misunderstandings in this field, which have overemphasized the cultivation and development of cognitive ability, but ignored the development of learners’affect. Thus, the indivisible relationship between cognition and affect is separated, and as a result poor learning effect and the vacancy of learners’affect are finally caused.Nowadays, affective factors are received increasing emphasis. As one of the important strategies in second language acquisition, affective strategies exert the most obvious influence in oral English learning. Sometimes learners are not very successful to succeed in communication although they have rich language knowledge; the main reason is the influence of their affect, such as anxiety, confidence, empathy and cross-cultural awareness, all of these will directly influence learners’communicative behaviors and results. Therefore, seeing from the perspective of English communication, it is necessary to explore affective strategies from the perspective of researching on English communicative problems, importantly and practically. The researches in this way will surely help to reduce the effect of the negative influence to a minimal level, and promote the positive affect in communication, thus, the goal of accuracy and fluency in oral English communication will be achieved. Clearly, the practical significance and values of such research can be seen from what mentioned above.According to the theories of humanistic psychology and affective filter hypothesis, ect., the present thesis tries to explore the influence and characteristics of affective factors in oral English communication for the purpose of discussing the affective problems, and then of finding out the related strategies.The research subjects are50Business English majors from Guangxi Normal University. The methods used for the research are questionnaire and interview with the research domains of learners’anxiety, confidence, empathy and cross-cultural awareness in their oral English communication process, and their situations of adopting affective strategies. The research has got the following major findings:1. When speaking English, learners’ anxiety level is relatively high. About half of them have ever used the four affective strategies which are listed to reduce anxiety.2. More than half of the learners lack confidence in English communication, especially during the oral English exam; they feel more nervous and lack confidence. About half of the learners have ever used the five strategies which are listed to increase their confidence.3. In the communication process, most of the learners will empathize with others. And more than half of the learners can understand little implicit cultural connotations in the communication, so they sorely need to increase their cross-cultural knowledge, but they can not get much in their classroom teaching.According to the findings drawn from the research and the inspirations from Oxford’s affective strategies, the present author puts forward the related affective strategies with the hope of helping learners reduce their anxiety, increase their confidence and finally enhance their abilities of empathy and cross-cultural awareness in English communication.