Exploration Of Affective Language Teaching To The Under-achievers In Senior High Schools

Along with the rapid development of technology and science, English is playing a moreand more important role in the whole world, which made English language teaching drawworldwide attention. Researchers and teachers have emphasized the importance of teachingmethods in foreign language teaching. Among various kinds of methods, affect factors inlearners’ personal development and the relation between affect and cognition aroused theauthor’s great interest. Affect is the bridge connecting the teacher and the students in teachingand learning. It is of vital significance to pay high attention to learners’ affective factors(Motivation, Attitude, Anxiety, Self-confidence) in English language teaching and learning.Firstly, paying attention to affective aspects is beneficial to more effective language learning.Learners’ potential may be compromised in the presence of extremely negative emotions suchas anxiety, fear, stress, anger and depression, which have adverse impact on language learning.Secondly, focusing on affective factors is also a way to educate integrated developmentstudents, especially on learners’ emotional education.In the field of English teaching, positive affect has an important influence on thedevelopment of students’ ability of understanding and using English, as well as their personaldevelopment. However, it is a typical example in high school education that the developmentof intelligence and knowledge is still given full attention and the cultivation of affect isneglected to some degree for sorts of reasons. Thus it’s necessary for teachers to integrateaffect into language teaching for the sake of meeting the requirement of quality-orientededucation and students’ comprehensive development. Plentiful researches and papers can befound about affect factors in middle school, high school and even university education, yetlittle attention has been paid to the affect factors about the under-achievers. Actually, thesegroups of students need more care and focus. The effective affective teaching and overalldevelopment of each individual can be realized if they get more positive comments.The thesis includes six chapters. Chapter One presents a brief introduction to this study,showing the current situation of English language teaching in Senior High Schools and theimportance of affective factors in English teaching. The aims and significance of the presentresearch will also be explained in this part. Chapter Two presents a review of the literature on the related studies concerning under-achievers in language learning and studies on affectivelanguage teaching. Chapter Three introduces three main affective factors: motivation, attitudeand anxiety, as well as the interaction between affect and under-achievers’ language learning,serving as the theoretical framework of the thesis. Chapter Four outlines the methodology andthe purpose to the research. After the research, the results and discussions will be thoroughlypresented in Chapter Five. Chapter Six provides some pedagogical implications and practicalways for both foreign language learners and teachers. Finally the conclusion of the thesis wasdrawn that affective factors are becoming more and more important in FLT and FLLnowadays，especially to the underachievers. Teachers should integrate affect into languageteaching as it has been a desirable goal for pedagogical and educational reasons. Theunder-achievers should know affective factors well and take advantage of the positive in theirfuture FLL.