A Study Of Affective Factors' Influence On High School Students' English Learning

Since the rise and growth of humanistic psychology in the 1960s,researchers have paid more and more attention to the affect in language teaching.Based on the theory of Humanistic psychology,the core of education is to promote people in all round development.For the all round development of mankind,we must attach importance to the affect as well as the cognition in learning.The New English Curriculum Standards promulgated by the Ministry of Education in 2011 points out that teachers should pay attention to the students' affective situation and help them build up confidence and experience a sense of achievement in language teaching.Therefore,besides teaching students knowledge and skills,teachers should pay more attention to their emotions.This thesis mainly focuses on studying the four major affective factors:motivation,self-esteem,inhibition,and teacher-student relationship.The author attempts to investigate the students' affective situation and its effects on students' English learning and explore the correlation between the students' affective factors and their English learning and how to make use of the positive affect to improve students' learning effectiveness.Besides,the author intends to arouse teachers' attention to students'emotions,which helps improve their teaching efficiency and facilitate students to develop fully and healthily.This thesis is based on humanistic psychology and Krashen's affective filter hypothesis.In order to understand the students' current affective situation,the author conducted a questionnaire survey and an interview on the affect status of 120 students of Grade Two in Xinzhou No.1 middle school in Hubei Province.Then the author collected the data and the students' English scores in the mid-term examination and analyzed the results by using SPSS 19.0.The investigation shows that a large number of students in senor high school have the inhibition in English learning,especially when they express themselves in English.They are afraid of making mistakes and don't dare to participate in the language activities.The inhibition and English learning are negatively correlated.The higher a students' inhibition is,the lower his/her English scores are.What's more,the results show that the majority of high-grade students have clear English learning motivation and there is a positive correlation between motivation and learning.The students with clear English learning motivation tend to attain achievements in English study.At the same time,the results show that self-esteem and English learning are also positively correlated.The higher a students' self-esteem is,the lower his/her English scores are.Besides,the results show that most students hold that the way that their English teacher treats them has an effect on their English study and they hope to establish a good relationship with their English teacher.The study shows that there is a positive correlation between teacher-student relationship and students' English learning.