A Study On The Application Of The Affective Teaching Strategy To Oral English Teaching In Senior High School

A speaker’s oral English level is influe nced by many factors, such as cognitive ability, learning styles, habits and af fective factors, et. Among speakers’ four basic skills: listening, speaking, reading and writi ng, “speaking” is heavily in fluenced by affective factors. It h as been prove d that po sitive emotions will f acilitate speaking process and improve learners’ speaking performance, while negative factors will bring barriers to speaking and reduce learners’ learning capacity. So as to address the issues in present English teaching, China’s Ministry of Education lists affective education as one of the five goals of English teachi ng and learning in “N ew National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School ”. Thus draws the a ttention of teachers and researchers of English in China.The author tries to put the af fective factors into the practice of oral English teaching in order to so lve the problem, which exists in the oral Eng lish teaching of senior high school at present. The affective teaching strategy is the way that teachers arouse the students’ enthusiasm by m eans of affective factors in class, creating a friendly and cooperative classroom atmosphere in which all the participants are equal, relieving the learners’ anxiety, stimulating st udents’ motivation to take part in oral English activities, reducing learners’ negative emotions in learning and sparking the enthusiasm for their oral English. B ased on Krashen’s affective filter hypothesis and the Piaget’s Constructivist theory, the author uses this teaching strategy to conduct the comparative experiment, which lasts for four months, in order to solve the following problems:1. Does the affective teaching strategy influence students’ oral English learning?2. If it does, in what aspects does it in fluence students in th eir oral English learning?3. How can a teacher help students improve their oral English by using the affective teaching strategy in class?The experiment lasts from September 1, 2014 to January 15, 2015. The author took Grade1, class 3 and class 4 student s of Dalian 103 Senior High School as research participants. Before the experiment the author carries on the contrast research by pretests to ensure the experim ental group and control group are roughly at the same level. In the experim ent, the same English teaching material is adopted and the teacher are the sam e for both classes. Ho wever, the experimental group and control group are using different teaching methods. The experimental group uses the affective teaching strategy, but the control group us es the trad itional teaching m ethod. The author gets the results through post-test, questionnaires and interviews. The results are analyzed by SPSS 19.0.The results show that the affective teaching strategy proves effectively in high school oral English teaching. Affective teaching can im prove students’ oral English classroom participation, stim ulate students’ interest in le arning oral English an d activate classroom’s atmosphere. Fin ally, the author discusses the en lightenment to the high school oral English teaching, also points out the limitations of this study. The author hopes this study will provid e some reference for further researchers on th e affective teaching strategy in China.