English Teachers’ Affective Strategy Use In High School

In China, owing to the pressure of college entrance examination, it is a commonthat English teaching in senior schools focuses on the traditional knowledge impartingmethod, and little importance has been attached to the affective communicationbetween teachers and students, let alone the effects that affective factors have onEnglish teaching. It greatly decrease students’ learning initiative, and turns thelearning into a boring process. The ideal teaching results thus can not be achieved.The present study investigated the affective strategies used by English teachersfrom high schools. It classified the affective strategies into5groups on the basis ofthe theories of "Affective Filter Hypothesis","humanistic psychology" and"Self-Efficacy". A questionnaire was also designed accordingly. The questionnaireaimed at learning about the usage of the affective strategies in high school Englishteaching, and hoped to offer a reference for the future English teaching and help toimprove the teaching efficiency.The subjects of this study came from20high schools in Nanchang. They were110teachers in total. Among the received96valid questionnaires, the teachers weredivided into four groups according to their teaching experience——1to5years,6to10years,11to15years and above15years. With the help of the questionnaires, thefollowing2questions were studied:1) To what extent do teachers in middle schooluse affective strategies in English teaching?2) Is there any difference of affectivestrategy use in teaching experience and gender?After analyzing the data, the thesis came to the following conclusions:1) Teachers do use affective strategies in English teaching to high school students.And the strategy of “Building a Harmonious Relationship with the Students” is themost commonly used.2) In terms of teaching experience, teachers of1-5years’ teaching experience dothe best, while teachers of11-15years’ teaching experience do the worst in affectivestrategies use.3) In terms of gender, except for the teachers of6-10years’ teaching experience,females in other groups use affective strategies more often than males. This thesis not only aims at offering reference for the senior school Englishteachers on the selection of proper teaching strategies, but also helping the teachersrealize the importance of affect in English teaching, and finally use all these strategiesconsciously to improve the teaching efficiency.