A Study Of Implementation Of Affective Objectives In Junior Middle School English Teaching

The traditional English teaching lays more emphasis on developing students’ linguistic competence and neglects their affective needs and satisfaction. It is a common phenomenon that cognition is emphasized and affect is neglected in English teaching in junior middle schools. With the deepening and developing of the new curriculum reform, more and more secondary schools in our country have tried to enhance the efforts to implement affective objectives in English teaching. Quite a few teachers in junior middle schools gradually realized the great importance of the affective objectives. The purpose of the study is to investigate the implementation of affective objectives in junior middle school English teaching, to find out existing problems related, and finally to try to propose relevant suggestions. There are three questions in this study. How do teachers implement affective objectives in English teaching? How do students implement affective objectives in English learning? What are the main factors which affect the implementation of affective objectives in junior middle school English teaching?The author chose Changle Experimental junior middle School and Weifang Experimental junior middle School in this study. 360 junior middle students and 35 English teachers from the two schools mentioned above are subjects of the study. Questionnaire, interview and classroom observation are adopted. The study is conducted mainly from the perspective of English teachers and that of students. The survey about teachers focuses on the following aspects: Teachers’ understanding and confidence of implementing affective objectives; the design of affective objectives in lesson plans; the implementation of affective objectives in English classroom teaching and relationship between teachers and students. The survey about students focuses on students’ interest, motivation, self-confidence, willpower and cooperation spirit. In terms of classroom observation, the design of affective objectives in lesson plans and teaching methods in class are taken into consideration.Through analysis of results in the study, the major findings are as follows:(1) Implementation of affective objectives and existing problems in terms of teachers’ teachingFirstly, it shows that most of teachers have certain understanding of affective objectives in junior middle schools to some degree, but some teachers’ understanding is not comprehensive and their confidence to realize the affective objectives is not enough. Secondly, quite a few English teachers neglect the realization of affective objectives in lesson plans. Thirdly, the present affective teaching method is one-sided. Multiple interaction between teachers and students, cooperative learning, situational and inquiry teaching methods aren’t brought to full play in class, so there are obvious flaws in the practical teaching method and teaching activities. Fourthly, communication between teachers and students is not enough.(2) Implementation of affective objectives and existing problems in terms of students’ learningIn terms of students, the result shows that implementation of affective objectives has good side and also has unsatisfactory side. On the one hand, more than 70% of students have high interest and willpower in learning English, and they also have strong desire to learn English. On the other hand, there are also unsatisfying side of students’ implementation of the affective objectives. Firstly, a number of students lack confidence to express themselves in English mainly because they are afraid of making mistakes. Secondly, students have good cooperation awareness but their cooperative performance in classroom is not active, which coincides with the analysis of affective teaching method mentioned above.Through further investigation, the main factor which affects the implementation of affective objectives is the lack of specific measures for reference, followed by the constraints of examination.Given the above problems, the author put forward the following suggestions so as to better implement the affective objectives in English teaching for junior middle school English teachers. Firstly, schools and education administration need to spare no efforts to reinforce study and training of affective objectives. Secondly, it’s necessary for teachers to deal with explicit and implicit affective factors scientifically and optimize the design of affective objectives in lesson plans. Thirdly, in class, teachers should adopt multiple interactive teaching methods like situational teaching, group work and etc. Fourthly, it’s time to further improve the harmonious relationship between teachers and students. It’s also important for teachers to provide positive evaluation in class in order to build students’ self-confidence.